


Flying Solo

by burkygirl



Series: The Flying Solo Series [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/M, Mexico
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:30:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 38,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5165603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burkygirl/pseuds/burkygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Katniss Everdeen's best friend Jo bails on their trip to Mexico at the last minute, an angry Katniss expects to spend her first-ever vacation all alone. That is, until she sees a familiar pair of blue eyes on the flight to Cancun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Solo Vacation

Katniss Everdeen shoved her carry-on bag into the overhead compartment. She wanted to kill Jo. This was entirely, 100 per cent Jo’s fault. Slamming the compartment door closed, she dropped into the seat below, digging through her pockets for her ipod and cramming the earbuds into her ears. She was nursing a hell of a mood and she needed loud, angry music to get her through it.

She could not believe she was in this situation. She could still hear Jo’s wheedling. It had gone on for months before Katniss had finally caved in, if only to shut her up.

 _Come on, Brainless, you’ve hardly even been out of the state, let alone out of the country for a vacation._ True.

 _All you’ve done since I met you is work. Prim is done school. It’s time to do something for yourself._ She might actually have had a point there.

 _It’ll be fun._ Not now, it won’t.

 _We’ll lay in the sun._ Well, one of them would.

 _We’ll get drunk._ Yep, that was definitely on the list, especially after Jo’s betrayal.

 _I’ll get laid – because you are both too hopeless and too brainless for that._ Well, Jo was definitely getting some. In fact, Jo’s sex life was exactly why she was sitting in plane on a direct charter flight to Cancun by herself next to an empty seat instead of her best friend. Two weeks ago, Jo had met a mystery man at the bar where she works. Claiming she was having the best sex of her life, Jo refused to let her hot new guy out of her sights for more than a night or two. Two weeks in Mexico was out of the question and so, she’d bailed out of their trip at the minute.

It was too late to get their money back, and Katniss had all but begged to get a full week off at the environmental engineering firm in Pittsburgh where she worked. Early spring was their busiest time of year and if there hadn’t been quite a lot of truth to Jo’s assertions that she never took a vacation, her boss would have given her a flat out no.

Jo loved Prim almost as much as Katniss did and would have handed over the tickets to her, but Prim was too new at the hospital where she worked, leaving Katniss stuck on a plane with about 200 other disgustingly happy people. On. Her. Own. As soon as she got back, she was shopping for a new best friend.

The problem was that Jo was almost her only friend. The two of them had been paired as roommates in their freshman year at the state university where Katniss had secured a full scholarship. They had fought incessantly for the first term. Jo was loud and crude and brought guys back to their dorm room, leaving Katniss to sleep on a couch in the common room. Katniss was introverted to the point of being anti-social and entirely focused on keeping her scholarship and finishing school as fast as she could. At best, they tolerated each other.

That all changed when they got back to school after Christmas and discovered they’d both had lousy vacations at home that year. Jo still refuses to talk about what happened back home in Oregon. Katniss had been forced to institutionalize her mother when she discovered that Ana Everdeen had hardly left her bed in the four months Katniss had been away at school. Years of depression had finally gotten the best of her. Fourteen-year-old Prim had been sullen, jealous of her sister’s new life and undernourished after all that time living on mac and cheese and ramen noodles. So Katniss had broken their lease, packed up the apartment and Hazelle Hawthorne had agreed to take Prim in until Katniss could come up with a plan for her little sister.

Unfortunately, that penultimate trip to Panem had also meant the end of her life-long friendship with Hazelle’s oldest son, Gale. On the last day before she left to go back to school, he’d declared his feelings for her were more than the brother-sister relationship that Katniss had always prized. He’d been angry and hurt that she’d pushed away from him when he’d mistaken her shock and silence at his declaration as permission to lay a less-than-brotherly kiss on her lips.

Katniss had returned to campus with a plan to get a job and an apartment for her and Prim as soon as classes were done for the term. Jo returned with a vow to never return to her hometown.

“We’ll both get jobs and well our own place, Brainless. Some little two bedroom between campus and a school. Your sister can room in with you. We’ll make our own family.”

And that’s exactly what they’d done for nearly eight years. Jo had gotten them both fake IDs (Katniss had never asked her how) so they could get jobs at the Hob, a bar near campus. The tips had been decent and while Katniss had the added expense of Prim to worry about, Jo had helped to share the burden of watching over a teenager living in the city for the first time. It hadn’t been easy, but the three of them had made it work and when Prim crossed the stage at her graduation from nursing school, Jo and Katniss were cheering her on from the seats designated for her family.

These days, Jo was managing the Hob while she worked on her graduate degree and Katniss had taken the job at Abernathy Environmental. Now that Prim was out on her own, Katniss was at loose ends. She had empty-nest syndrome and she wasn’t even 30 years old.

Truth be told, she’d been bored and lonely for months. Jo was more than a little fed up with her “pissy mood,” and this trip was supposed to be the cure. So, she supposed she wouldn’t be right to get a new best friend after all they’d been through. Anyway, it was just too hard to train another roommate.

Well into the three-hour flight to Cancun, Katniss peered down the aisle looking for the flight attendant with the drink cart. She found her closer to the front, tossing her golden locks over her shoulder, clearly flirting with a blond man. Katniss watched as the flight attendant started to pour him a beer in a disposable cup that appeared to decline. Instead, she passed him the can before working her way up the rest of the aisle, handing out snacks and beverages. Katniss was pulling out her earbuds so she could order her drink when a second flight attendant, this one a red head with a pointy face that reminded Katniss of a fox, approached and picked up a thermal carafe that most likely contained coffee. She placed one manicured hand on the side.

“Is it hot?”

The blonde looked up and quirked her eyebrow. “Yes. Very,” she said as she smoothly passed pretzels to the young couple in the seat in front of Katniss, taking their drink orders.

Katniss smothered a chuckle. She and Jo were masters of subtle girl talk. They’d had to be with a teenager in the house, and while Katniss had occasionally ‘worked late’ the conversations had usually been about Jo’s love life.

“Has everyone up front got what they need?”

“For now,” said the blonde, smothering a sly grin as she passed pretzels to the couple on the other side of the aisle. “I have some information I expect the man in 12A will want a little later.”

Katniss accepted her pretzels and looked up to see the top of 12A’s head weaving down the aisle toward them. The next thing she noticed was how blue his eyes seemed to be. She’d only ever known one guy with eyes like that. Katniss felt a prickle on the back of her neck. No. It couldn’t be possible.

But not only was it possible, it was real. Peeta Mellark was standing only three feet away and his baby blues were trained directly on her.

 


	2. Prom Night

_When the gym door closed behind her, the pounding music was reduced to a dull, throbbing bass. Katniss breathed in the night air and heaved a sigh of relief. She leaned against the wrought iron rail at the top of the steps. Prom. How in the hell had she ended up at senior prom? Well, technically she knew how. Lying together on the plush carpet of her palatial bedroom in the upscale part of Panem, Madge had insisted that prom was a not-to-be-missed teenage experience and that Katniss just had to be there. “Come on, six months from now, we’ll all be away at school or working. We’re best friends and it won’t be the same without you. This is one of our last chances to be all together, just really having fun.”_

_Katniss had tried to argue that she didn’t have the money for a dress, but Madge had just thrown open the door to her walk-in closet. “Katniss, my parents have dragged me to more fancy parties than I care to remember. Take anything you want, just come to prom.”_

_And so, when Gale suggested they split the cost of the tickets and go as friends, Katniss had caved in. If her two best friends wanted her to go that badly, she could wear a dress for one night. She’d chosen a forest green dress from Madge’s closet that had been simple enough to suit her tastes. It had spaghetti straps and a sweetheart neckline that made her look like she actually had boobs and then it nipped in at her waist before flaring out over her hips. The fabric of the knee-length skirt had a bit of sparkle to it that Madge had pronounced to be fancy enough for prom, and there was some kind of netting underneath it (Madge had called it tulle?) that gave the skirt a fluffy effect._

_Prim had clapped her hands in excitement over the dress when Katniss put it on to get ready before pouncing on her big sister with the curling iron, curling and pinning her hair until it flowed over her shoulder. Her mother had smiled vaguely and told her that she looked “lovely” and when Gale had arrived to pick her up, he'd said she “looked like a girl for once,” which was high praise from him._

_Now Madge and Gale were nowhere to be found and Madge’s date, Tom, was in a corner wrapped around a blonde who wasn’t Madge. Katniss was giving serious consideration kicking off her heels and walking home. She’d made up her mind to do just that when she heard the door close behind her. Heavy steps approached and then Peeta Mellark joined her at the rail. Katniss turned to look at him, and felt the familiar pull of attraction in her stomach that always happened when he was near. His usually messy locks were slicked back tonight and the jacket of his rented tux was pulling slightly through the shoulders as he leaned on his forearms._

_“Nice night,” he said, not looking at her._

_“Yeah.” Her mouth was dry and her mind was blank. God, she had no game. How many times had she watched him wander the halls at school, joking around with his wrestling teammates Thresh and Darius and wished for the chance to have a few minutes alone with him? She was standing outside the prom with Peeta effing Mellark, and that was the best she could do?_

_“How come you’re not inside?”_

_“I just needed a break, you know? It’s really loud in there.” And my date has disappeared, possibly with my best friend. We just came as friends, but still._

_“Me too. Where’s your boyfriend?”_

_“I don’t have a boyfriend.”_

_Peeta turned toward her, his eyes narrowing a bit in scrutiny. “Sure you do. Gale Hawthorne. Big guy, about six-two? Walks you to and from school. Scowls at any guy who comes near. Kills things for fun?”_

_Katniss rolled her eyes. “Gale’s just a friend. More of an annoying, over-protective big brother, really. We’ve lived next door to each other since we were in diapers. Our dads both died in that accident at the plant a few years back, so we end up spending a lot of time together, to help our families.”_

_“Could have fooled me. He sure doesn’t look at you like a friend.”_

_“He doesn’t act like one either. In fact, he’s being a lousy friend tonight. There’s a pretty good chance that he and Madge have snuck off together somewhere.” Katniss clapped her hand over her mouth. She couldn’t believe she just admitted to Peeta Mellark that she thought her best friends had just dumped her at prom. She’d officially confirmed her loser status to the hottest guy in school._

_Peeta didn’t laugh though. Instead, he scraped his teeth over his bottom lip thoughtfully and turned to her. “Who did Madge come with?”_

_“Tom Applewood.”_

_Peeta looked up at the night sky and laughed. “Well, that explains why he is currently enjoying all that my date has to offer.”_

_Now it was Katniss’s turn to be skeptical. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would any girl want to spend half the night playing tonsil hockey with Tom, when she came here with you?”_

_He gave her a little half smile, his eyes sparkling in spite of their circumstances. “I think there was a compliment in there somewhere. But, I don’t care, not really. Delly and I just came to the prom as friends. She knew I wanted to be here with someone else.”_

_“Why didn’t you ask the girl you wanted to take?”_

_“I figured her boyfriend would take her, but I wanted to be here, you know? Just in case I worked up the nerve to ask her to dance.”_

_Katniss smiled at him softly. “I hope you do.”_

_Peeta flashed a bright smile at her. “Well, I’d say my chances are looking up.”_

_She shivered then, the chill of the spring night finally getting to her._

_“You’re cold. Here.” Peeta quickly shed his jacket and wrapped it around her slender shoulders. It smelled of his spicy cologne and was still warm from his body. She resisted the urge to burrow inside it. “Better?” he whispered from behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders. She nodded. “Wait a second. Your hair is caught inside.” She felt a tingle run all the way down her spine when his fingers brushed along the back of her neck to lift her thick mane of hair from the inside of his jacket so that it once again flowed over her shoulder like a river of chocolate. When she turned back to face him, he lifted a single curl from the lapel of his jacket and twirled it around his finger._

_“What do you say we go back inside and salvage the rest of this night?” he asked as he played with the curl. Katniss told him of her plan to walk home. “Ah, come on. I’m not much of a dancer, but it’ll still be fun. If I step on your toes, I’ll drive you home. I promise.”_

_He held out his hand to her and after only a moment’s hesitation, Katniss placed her small hand in his larger one. She felt a jolt of electricity in her hand that went straight to her gut. Their eyes locked. He felt it too. She knew it. Her heart was leaping in her chest as he held the door for her to go back inside the gym. She passed him back his jacket and he shrugged it back on before seizing her hand again. The Black Eyed Peas were telling everybody to get out on the floor and she and Peeta joined the crowd of their classmates dancing to the music. Thresh and Darius let out a cheer when they spotted Peeta pulling her over to them. They were, Katniss felt, surprisingly welcoming to her. Darius fist-bumped Peeta said something to him that she couldn’t hear over the music, but the tips of his ears turned almost as red as Darius’s closely cropped red hair. One song turned to five, but he didn’t let go of her hand and Katniss didn’t want him to. Her galloping heart had slowed and been replaced by a warm glow that seemed to be extending through her entire body. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled this much._

_When the DJ finally played a slow song, Katniss was overcome by shyness, but didn’t resist when Peeta pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her waist. She looked up at him slowly as she slid her arms up his shoulders before wrapping them around his neck. His eyes were soft and he smiled at her before whispering in her ear. “Thanks for saving prom for me.” She smiled back, her tongue wrapped in knots. Peeta placed his forehead against her own and rubbed his thumb against her cheek. “Can I tell you a secret?”_

_Her eyes met his and she forced her mouth to move. “Sure.”_

_“I was really glad to hear that Hawthorne isn’t your boyfriend because …”_

_Katniss felt a large hand clamp down firmly on her shoulder. She looked up to see Gale, his face red and his eyes burning with fury. “I think I’ll take my date back now, Mellark,” he hissed._

_Peeta didn’t back down and he didn’t let go of Katniss. “I think she stopped being your date over an hour ago, Hawthorne, when you disappeared with Madge over there.”_

_Katniss looked around Gale to see Madge standing near the entrance to the gym’s locker rooms. Her hair was mussed and she wore a hurt look on her face._

_Thresh and Darius stepped up behind their best friend, their arms crossed. “Everything OK here, Peet?” asked Thresh in his deep voice._

_A muscle in Gage’s jaw twitched as he evaluated his odds, before lifting his hand off Katniss’s shoulder to clench it into a fist at his side. “I said take your hands off her.”_

_“Gale, stop it,” she hissed. “You’re embarrassing me.”_

_“Catnip, stay out of this. Can’t you see what this asshole is trying to do?”_

_“Stay out of it?” Katniss stepped away from all of them, shaking with fury. “How dare you storm over here and act like you have any right to say anything about what I do? We came here as friends, Gale.”_

_“Catnip ...”_

_“We’re friends, Gale, or at least we used to be.” Her voice was rising over the music. Thresh and Darius’s dates – she thought their names were Clove and Glimmer – were gaping._

_“And what’s worse, after you and Madge convinced me to come, you both took off on me and it’s plain to see what you were doing,” she raged, pointing at Madge, who buried her face in her hands and ran back into the locker room. “So how dare you -- how dare you -- come over here and act like someone is stepping on your territory. We were dancing, Gale. Dancing. Peeta has been a perfect gentleman all night, but you wouldn’t know anything about what that means. I’m going home. Don’t you dare follow me.”_

_Katniss turned to Peeta and his friends. “I’ve ruined your night. I’m so sorry.” Then, she summoned up what was left of her dignity and stormed out of the gym. She heard footsteps behind her, and someone calling her name, but she didn’t look back and she didn’t slow down. Determined to lose her follower, she slammed out the door and darted around the corner of the gym, swiping the tears of humiliation from her eyes._

_Peeta raced out the door. “Katniss! Katniss, wait!” He stood in the amber glow of the parking lot lights, turning in a circle, calling out to her. “Katniss!” He ran his fingers into his hair in frustration before picking up a rock. “Fuck!” he screamed as he sent it flying before running off to find his car._

_Katniss watched the whole thing from the side of the gym, too ashamed to call out to him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered._

* * *

 

His eyes were bleary when they landed on her. Her years of working in a bar told her that Peeta was hammered. She also didn’t think recognized her, and felt a stab of regret at the idea. Then, he shook his head slightly as though he was confused, before turning a 1,000-watt smile on the blonde flight attendant. “S’cuse me, Cashew.”

“Cashmere, sweetie,” she said with a hint of irritation to her voice.

“Sorry. S’cuse me, though. I gotta take a leak.” The woman manoeuvered their cart so that he could get by. Peeta staggered towards the restrooms.

“Yes, very hot. He’s totally into you, Cashew,” snickered Foxface under her breath. The blonde pretended not to hear her.

They moved on to other passengers and Katniss was reclining in her seat with her eyes closed, listening to her ipod again when he shuffled back to his seat. She didn’t see him glance back at her as he walked by.

 


	3. Reunion

Peeta walked along the beach in front of the resort, but his mind wasn’t on the white sand or the brilliant blue of the Caribbean Sea. Instead, it was wandering back in time to a girl he hadn’t seen in nearly 10 years. The girl he’d watched from afar from the time he was a boy. Peeta still remembered the first time he laid eyes on her. Their principal had asked if anyone knew the national anthem and she’d stood in front of their entire school in her crisp new school uniform, her dark hair plaited in two braids that streamed down her back, and sung it from start to finish. Her clear, pure voice ringing out over the gymnasium had given five-year-old Peeta goosebumps. He pointed her out to his father the next day when he dropped Peeta off at school and Lars Mellark had confided that her name was Katniss Everdeen and her mother had once been his girl, but her father’s singing voice had charmed her right out of his arms. Peeta couldn’t understand why any girl wouldn’t want to be with his dad, but he had a certain amount of sympathy for Katniss’s mother.

He’d never met another girl who’d had the same effect on him, though he had certainly tried to find one. No matter how many girls he kissed through his teenage years, no matter how many olive-skinned women with raven tresses that he’d pursued while at culinary school, none had measured up to Katniss Everdeen.

He thought he’d finally gotten her out of her system when he’d proposed to Delly, whose big blue eyes had filled with tears when he’d gotten down on one knee and asked her to marry him. He wasn’t a man who made promises lightly, and Peeta had been willing to do everything in his power to make her happy. A shared lifetime was an enormous pledge, but Peeta had figured if his father could make that promise to his mother and actually keep it after all that she’d said and done, he could do the same for kind woman like Delly Cartwright.

But even after all of that, it seemed that Katniss Everdeen was never really that far from his thoughts. He’d been so drunk on the plane yesterday that he’d actually imagined her sitting there, accepting a drink from the flight attendant. When he’d made his way back to his seat, he’d convinced himself that the tired woman listening to her ipod couldn’t possibly be Katniss. He’d also decided that his plan to spend this entire trip in a bottle would need to be abandoned if the result was imagining Katniss Everdeen around every corner.

So, this morning he’d awoken fully dressed on the king-sized bed in his suite. The Caribbean sun was beaming through the balcony doors, but his head was pounding too much to enjoy the ocean-front view. He’d crossed the travertine style into the marble bathroom, swallowed some ibuprophin and jumped in a shower that was almost as big as his bedroom in the apartment over the restaurant back home. He’d gotten out of the shower feeling like a new man and decided to take a walk on the beach.

He was strolling along, lost in his thoughts when he saw her walking out of the surf to a chaise about 50 feet away. Her olive skin was glistening from the water, and the black bikini clung to her curves. Long dark hair was tied up in a braid that fell over her shoulder. When she finished towelling off, she stretched out on the chair, pulled a pair of aviator glasses and what appeared to be a Kindle from her beach bag, and seemed to be settling in for a morning in the sun.

Was she real or not real? Peeta wasn’t sure, but he decided the time was as good as any to find out.

* * *

 

Katniss dropped the Kindle in her lap and closed her eyes. If she could work up the energy, she’d walk over to the bar and get a mimosa. Maybe if she laid here long enough, a waiter would offer to bring her one. This seemed like the kind of resort where that kind of thing could happen, not that she’d know. There had never been money for this kind of vacation before.

She didn’t open her eyes when she heard someone stretch out beside her. She could tell by his size that it was a man and it wasn’t until he spoke that she knew which man it was. She would never forget how it sounded when he’d whispered in her ear.

“Nice day.” Oh God, oh God. Not only was he on the same plane, they were at the same resort.

“Yeah.” She was not going to open her eyes. She was not. If she did, the Earth would open up and swallow her whole.  

“Listen, would you happen to have some sunscreen in your bag? I wasn’t thinking about how hot it would be when I left my suite this morning.”

She was going to have to open her eyes or be incredibly rude, which was tempting, but that would only make the situation more awkward. So she sighed and reached over into her bag and wrapped her hands around the bottle of SPF 30 before turning to the smiling man beside her.

“Here.” She said, as she passed it over. At this distance, she could tell that the years had been kind to Peeta Mellark. His chest and abs were still broad and firm. The muscles of his arms were well-sculpted. There was a trace of stubble at his jaw and the faintest of laugh lines at the corners of his mouth. His eyes were covered by his Ray-Bans, but she knew they were as blue as the sea in front of them. His golden curls were topped by a straw cowboy hat.

“Thanks,” he said, pouring some into his hand so he could rub it on his chest. Katniss’s eyes were drawn to the motion. “Um, you look so much like a girl I used to know back home, but I haven’t seen her in a long time, so I was wondering …”

He didn’t recognize her? Seriously? Annoyance overcame embarrassment and she leaned over the arm of her chair, slid her shades down her nose just a little, and scowled. “Come on, Peeta. Have I aged that much?”

The hand rubbing sunscreen into his shoulder stilled, and then he shook his head and chuckled lightly. “Of course it’s you. I thought I was imagining things. It’s been so long, it didn’t seem possible that it would be you. Was that you on the plane yesterday too?”

Katniss sat back then, turning her face toward the sun. “You were so loaded that I wasn’t sure you even saw me,” she said. “Did Cashmere get you back to the hotel safely?”

Peeta finished applying his sunscreen and tossed the bottle on the chaise where it landed beside her leg. “Was that her name? I thought she was named after a nut or something.”

It was Katniss’s turn to laugh. “You called her Cashew, but that didn’t seem to deter her. I figured she’d follow you back to your hotel.”

He shook his head, before reaching down to lift a Corona off the sand beside him. “Nah. I think she scrawled her number on my boarding pass, but she’s not my type.” Katniss didn’t ask him what his type was. “So, what brings you down here?”

“Vacation,” she shrugged and turned her attention back to him. “The first in … Well, the first ever really.”

She watched his eyebrows raise over his dark, wrap-arounds. “And I thought I worked too much. No vacations, no long weekends, ever?”

“Well, I used to take Prim camping on a long weekend once in a while, but getting on a plane just to lie around for an entire week? This is a first.” She sighed. “I’ve never had this much free time before. I don’t know what to do with myself.” Katniss was surprised she’d revealed so much. “Enough about me. What brings you here?”

Peeta raised his beer to his lips and gave her a quick smirk.

“Well, Katniss, I’m on my honeymoon.”

 


	4. Shine a Light on It

If Katniss hadn't been lying down, she would have fallen over, or needed to sit down at least. Of all of the scenarios that could have led to him sitting here beside her at long last – meeting buddies, a bachelor party, even a vacation with a girlfriend - the possibility of Peeta being married had not occurred to her, and it tore at her heart a little, even after all these years.

"Wow," she managed, wishing fervently for that mimosa which had yet to materialize. "I hadn't heard a thing about your engagement. Congratulations." She offered him a smile that she hoped appeared sincere. She needed to get away. Now. Before his wife showed up.

But apparently, Peeta wanted to talk. He looked at her curiously. "I didn't realize that you still kept up with the news from home."

"Rory Hawthorne keeps Prim up to date." Katniss dropped her sunscreen and e-reader into her beach bag.

"They still talk?"

"Talk?" Katniss smirked. "I'd say so. Every night over the pillows."

"Whoa. They're together now? They're still kids in my head."

"Tell me about it," she said as she stood up. She picked up her white sarong, completely unaware of the way he watched her as she wrapped it about her slender waist and stuffed her feet into her flipflops. "Well, I've got a spa appointment in a little while," she lied. She had planned to spend the entire morning on the beach, engrossed in her new book. "I'd better take this stuff to my room and get changed. It was nice to see you again, Peeta. I hope you and your wife have a nice vacation."

"Uh, yeah. Sure, Katniss. You too. I'll see you around," he said, though his voice sounded tired now.

She didn't notice his eyes on her back as she beelined across the sumptuous grounds of the resort to her room where her beach bag got tossed carelessly onto what should have been Jo's bed.

She flopped down on her own bed, still thinking about her talk with Peeta. She supposed it was her own fault that she'd been surprised by the news he was married. It's not like she'd made any real effort to keep in touch with the goings-on back in Panem. Prim rambled on about Panem regularly, but it was just easier to block it out. Thoughts of Panem always brought on bad memories of her mother staring off into space and of long, hungry nights when she'd fed Prim what was left in the fridge while she went to bed with an empty stomach because she hadn't been able to make her father's survivor benefits stretch to the end of the month. Still, Katniss was convinced that if Prim had ever mentioned Peeta getting married, she would have remembered. In fact, her chatty sister knew absolutely everything that was happening back in Panem, but she hadn't mentioned Peeta's name once since they left. Katniss frowned and wondered why that would be. She couldn't possibly know. Could she?

She climbed off the bed and, crossing to the desk, switched on her ipad. She connected it to the resort's wifi and then scrolled through her favourites. Her finger hovered over Prim's name. She thought Prim was on nights this week at the hospital, so she was probably home and awake at this time of day. She bit her lip. Probably. It didn't matter. She needed to know. She pressed FaceTime.

When Prim's face appeared on the screen, Katniss grinned.

"Hey! Are you seriously FaceTiming me from Mexico?"

"Sure am, Little Duck. How are you?"

"Great. I just woke up. I was looking out the window at what's left of the snowbanks and feeling incredibly jealous."

Katniss smiled wider. Just seeing her little sister's face made her feel immeasurably better. "It's gorgeous. Want to see?" She swapped to the rear camera and listened as Prim enthusiastically oohed and ahhed over the room. Then she opened the patio door to show her the exotic garden where the pool was only steps away. "It's a swim-up room," she said, gloating a little.

Prim's mouth was hanging open. "Gah! Katniss! You are not helping."

Katniss laughed as she switched the camera back. "I wish you were here, Prim. It's nice, but…"

"You're lonely."

"Yeah."

"It would be so great to be there with you right now, but I really think this trip is going to be good for you. You should try new things. Meet new people. Honestly, you've been taking care of me for so long I think you've never really had a chance to take care of yourself."

 _That was probably true._ "When did you get so smart, Little Duck?"

Prim stuck out her tongue. "I've always been smart. You were just too busy to notice. So come on. You haven't talked to anyone at all?"

"Well, I talked to the flight attendant yesterday, and the desk clerk when I arrived…"

"Katniss!" Prim sounded exasperated.

"I'm kidding. Well, sort of. I just got here, Prim. Give me a little time, OK?" Her sister sighed. "Hey," she said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Guess who was on the flight and is staying at the resort?"

"Who? Liam Hemsworth?"

Katniss laughed at her sister's fangirl obsession with the actor who looked like an older, glossier version of Rory. "No. Peeta Mellark." She watched her sister carefully. Prim's poker face was even lousier than her own. She was right. Prim was hiding something. "Do you remember him?"

"The baker's son? Kind of. He was your age, so I didn't know him."

"I was thinking today that you'd never mentioned him in all your reports from back home."

"Well, Rory doesn't talk about him. He doesn't like him much."

Katniss made a skeptical face. Everyone back home liked Peeta, except Gale. "What? Why?"

Prim wouldn't look at the camera now. "Rory blames him for why we left Panem. He says that you and Gale would have gotten together if it wasn't for him."

Katniss sighed. What had Gale told Rory to cause him to believe that? "Prim, you know why we left," she said tiredly. "I've explained this, like, a thousand times to you. I couldn't leave you there with Mom. She's just too fragile. She needed help. I had to get an education if we were going to have any kind of future. I thought she was well enough to take care of you when I left, but… You know what happened, Prim. You couldn't keep living like that. And we did OK, didn't we?"

It was Prim's turn to sigh. "Yeah, we did great. But Gale said…"

"What Prim? What did he say?

Her sister looked back into the camera. "Katniss, Rory said that Gale came home on prom night all upset because you'd been dancing with Peeta Mellark. And, you came home late and alone that night and you wouldn't talk about it. You hardly left the house all summer, except for work at Sae's."

Katniss closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she shook her head. "I suppose he didn't tell Rory what he'd been up to that night."

Prim shook her head.

"God. I was so embarrassed, Prim. Gale ruined everyone's night. He completely humiliated me and made a fool of himself and Madge."

Prim's eyes grew bigger and bigger as Katniss recounted the most embarrassing night of her life, but feeling better and better as her little sister took her side.

"Aw, Katniss. I'm so sorry. That was a rotten thing to do to you. Did he ever apologize?"

Katniss nodded, remembering their awkward conversation when she'd returned from Pittsburgh that Christmas. He'd apologized for the prom and confessed that seeing her with Peeta had made him realize that he had feelings for her. Katniss was still reeling from shock when she'd felt his lips on hers and been forced to push him away.

"When he saw me with Peeta, he just kind of lost it, I guess. But that wasn't Peeta's fault. It was Gale and Madge's behaviour that started the whole thing in the first place."

Prim frowned. "I don't know how you can defend him, Katniss, after what he did."

She scowled in confusion. "Who? Gale?"

Prim rolled her eyes. "No. Peeta."

"What do you mean, Prim? I just explained…"

Prim cut her off. "Katniss, do you really think I've forgotten that night not long after I moved down? You stayed out all night and when you came home you were just … floating. And then you weren't."

Katniss felt her heart sink down to her belly. "I didn't know that you knew about that," she said flatly.

"Katniss, you're my sister and we shared a room in a tiny apartment! You don't think I heard you crying every night for a week? You barely got out of bed to go to school. I was so scared. If Johanna hadn't told me what happened, I would have lost it."

"Jo told you!"

"She had to. I was freaking out. I was so afraid that you were getting sick like Mom. She swore me to secrecy before she told me and then she said if you didn't come out of it soon, she was going to track him down and personally kick his bread-making ass. But you did."

 _Aw, Jo. Bless your ball-busting heart of gold._ Katniss could still remember the way Jo had hauled her out of bed one afternoon, claiming the best cure for a broken heart was getting loaded and man-bashing with your best pal. Jo had mixed them margaritas with tequila Katniss suspected she'd stolen from the Hob and regaled her with stories of her drunken hook-ups until Katniss was too drunk to stand up and laughing to hard to try. In the morning, she'd nursed a killer hangover and started to pack Peeta Mellark into a corner of her heart. She thought she'd left him there. Until yesterday.

"Well, it doesn't matter now," Katniss said. "Peeta got married. He's here on his honeymoon."

Now it was Prim's turn to be shocked. "No. I would have heard that."

"He is. He told me not two hours ago on the beach."

Prim looked thoughtful. "Huh. Did you meet his wife?"

"No. And I don't want to. Listen, I'm trying to decide what to do tomorrow. Jungle tour in a dune buggy or snorkling with sea turtles?"

Prim rolled her eyes, whether at her artless attempt to change the subject or the choices at hand, Katniss would never know.

"Duh. Jungle tour," Prim said. "Feeling better now?"

"Yeah, I am. Thanks Little Duck."

They made promises to talk again soon and disconnected. Exhausted by the conversation and the emotions of the day, Katniss decided to curl up and have a nap.

* * *

Peeta's damp t-shirt clung to his body and sweat was dripping off of his nose, but he continued to push himself on the treadmill in the resort's well-equipped gym. Usually, the relentless monotony of running in place helped him to think, but not today.

How did his life turn into such a mess? He couldn't remember the last time he'd tried something creative in the kitchen. His bottles of paint back home were dusty. The engagement to Delly. The endless extra hours that he'd put in to pay for her ring and this trip that she'd wanted. He felt like a twisted, mutt-version of himself that he didn't recognize.

The treadmill slowed as it moved into cool-down mode and he reached for the towel he'd hung over the bar to wipe the sweat from his face and neck before scrubbing it over his damp hair. When the machine finally stopped, he wiped it down quickly and moved to the free weights, still brooding. And, just as they had for the better part of the last two days - for the better part of his life if he were honest with himself – a pair of silver eyes floated to the forefront of his consciousness. Damn. His life was confusing enough right now without that sexy scowl peering at him over the top of a pair of sunglasses.

The familiar longing had hit him like a punch in the gut. He was man enough to admit that, and if the hurt 19-year-old he'd been had surfaced long enough to use a half-truth to give her a taste of her own medicine - well, he was human enough to admit that too.

The way she'd paled at his news this morning and fled had shaken and surprised him. He hadn't expected her to care. The guilt was pricking away at his conscience, but in a way, it gave him hope. Peeta might not be sure of who he was anymore, but he was certain that the good man his father had raised him to be was still in there.

By the time Peeta returned to his room, he was able to concede that the workout had done him some good after all. He needed to straighten out his life and whether by fate or circumstance, it seemed that his first course of action would be resolving things with Katniss Everdeen once and for all.


	5. The First and the Second

Katniss struggled to put in the hoop earrings she’d borrowed from Jo, her heels tapping as she crossed the tile floor in the combination kitchen/living room of the apartment she and Prim were sharing with her brazen, opinionated friend.

Prim was stretched out on the floor watching a Dawson’s Creek marathon.

“Dawson or Pacey?”

“Dawson,” Prim replied.

Katniss held her hand up in Prim’s face. “Don’t talk to me. We are not sisters.” Prim giggled. “Order the pizza from Mario’s around the corner,” she instructed as she moved across the space toward Prim. “He does a 12-inch, three topping pie for $15. I left you the money on the counter and we’ll eat the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.”

Prim jumped up from her spot on the floor. “I can handle it, Katniss. Rue will be here in a few minutes. We’ll have some pizza, watch TV for a while and then I’ll crash across the hall at her place.”

“OK, but if you have any trouble, I’ll have my cell on. If I don’t answer, try Jo. If that doesn’t work, send me a text.”

“Katniss, will you stop? Everything will be fine here. You haven’t had a night out since I moved in six months ago. You look amazing, by the way,” she said.

Katniss tugged uncomfortably at the tight black skirt. She knew the modest red sleeveless top looked great against her olive-toned skin, but she felt like an imposter in the mini-skirt Jo shoved at her while simultaneously telling her to “dress like a female for once.” Katniss had shut the door in Jo’s face, but she’d put on the skirt. Appropriate underwear had been more of a problem, but Katniss had decided to be practical. Nobody would know.

“You should wear your hair down more often,” Prim said as she peered closer at her sister. “Hey, did Johanna give you smoky eyes? Jo, no fair,” she called out over Katniss’s shoulder, her voice uncharacteristically whiny. “I asked you to do smoky eyes for me and you said you couldn’t do it.”

“Couldn’t do that to the male population at your school, Kiddo,” Jo drawled as she leaned on the frame of the door to her room. “If a chick as gorgeous as you showed up with smoky eyes, they’d be your slaves for life.” Prim gave a throaty chuckle as Jo joined them at the apartment door. Her jeans were slung low on her hips and her cropped shirt exposed her navel ring. “Anyway,” she said, her glossy red lips forming a snarl as she strapped her feet into a pair of sparkly sandals, “Brainless here needs all the help she can get.” She stood up. “Stay out of trouble, all right?”

Prim laughed again and flopped onto the sofa, grinning impishly at the two of them. “Don’t worry, Jo. I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do.”

Jo gave her a shameless wink. “That doesn’t leave a hell of a lot, Kiddo. I’d feel better if you’d just promise to act like Brainless on an average Friday night.”

Prim gave an exaggerated sigh. “Booo-ring!”

Katniss rolled her eyes. Having Prim in the apartment had softened Jo’s edges and brought Katniss out of her shell, but when the two of them ganged up on her, it was best just to go with the flow. “We’d better get downstairs. The cab will be here soon.”

“Have fun, you two!”

The cab ride over to the south side neighbourhood where the party was being held only took 15 minutes and before Katniss knew it, she was standing in front of a row house in a student neighbourhood. Dance music was pouring from the windows. Katniss licked her lips nervously. “So give me the low-down on how you know this guy again?”

“Finnick’s in my lit class,” she said as she dragged Katniss up the stairs. “He’s a drama major. His parents are loaded or something and they bought this place for him. He rents out the bedrooms to other students to cover the mortgage. He’s seriously hot, Brainless, so do not embarrass me tonight.” Jo barked the last sentence like an order as she swung open the door to the house. They had barely shut it behind them when they were met by a gorgeous man whose bronze hair was deliberately coiffed into a state of permanent bed head.

“Jo! You made it,” he said, sweeping her into a hug before holding her at arm’s length and sweeping her entire body in a single, smoldering gaze. “You look… delicious.”

“Finn! You look… hungry,” said Johanna, slipping easily into his game. “This is my roommate, Katniss.”

“Come on in, Sugar.” Their host grinned at her. “Drinks are in the kitchen.”

Jo and Katniss wove their way through the crowd of bodies to the kitchen at the back of the house where Finnick said a keg hand been tapped. Katniss noticed bodies pressed close and dancing in the living room. A boisterous game of beer pong had started on the dining room table. The atmosphere was more relaxed in the kitchen where the music wasn’t as loud. Students leaned against the counters laughing and talking about friends and classes they had in common.

“I’m going into the living room,” Jo said in her ear when her cup was full. “I’m gonna bust out my moves and see if I can lure Finnick into dancing with me. You wanna come?” Katniss shook her head, deciding to hang out in the kitchen and maybe check out the game in the dining room. She was backing away from the keg with a full cup, when she bumped into a solid body behind her.

“Whoa, steady there.” She felt a guy’s hand at her hip and turned around to make sure that it was returned to its rightful owner.

“Peeta!”

“Katniss? Oh my God! It’s really you!” The next thing she knew, Katniss was being enfolded in an exuberant hug. She closed her eyes and breathed him in; spicy cologne and something else that was male and uniquely his. He grabbed her by the hand and led her over to the breakfast nook, tucking himself into the corner and pulling her in beside him. “This is so wicked. I thought I might never see you again,” he enthused, his blue eyes dancing. She could tell he’d been drinking just enough to drop his guard.

“So, uh, hey. It’s good to see you too.” She sipped her beer. What was it about this guy that made it impossible for her to say anything intelligent?

Peeta reached out and fingered a lock of her hair before tucking it behind her ear. “You look so hot. I mean, gorgeous. No, you were gorgeous at prom. This...” He scanned her quickly up and down before fixing his gaze back on her face. “This is off the charts. You look so hot. Amazing, I mean. Amazingly hot.” They both blushed and laughed. Peeta looked away, rubbing his hand against the back of his neck. “I’m usually pretty good with words,” he admitted, “but between the beer and shock of seeing you again, I’m not doing so well.”

Katniss laughed again. “You’re doing fine. Better than me,” she said, his fumbling sweetness giving her confidence she didn’t know she had. “You look great too.” It was true, and not just because the polo shirt he was wearing matched the colour of his eyes or because his jeans were worn in all the right places and hugged his hips just right. He seemed happier than she remembered from their days in high school. Not that she’d never known Peeta to be unhappy, exactly. He’d always been laughing and surrounded by friends, but tonight it seemed as though he’d put down a burden that she hadn’t known he was carrying. “So, what are you doing here?”

“Culinary school. I cut a deal with my parents. Four years and then I’ll come home and work in the bakery like a good boy until they retire. My mother is complaining about the cost, but Dad supported me, so here I am.” He shrugged and took a long swallow from his cup. “I’m working part time as a prep cook and a pastry chef at a nice restaurant not far from here. I thought the experience would be good, and I’m using the cash to pay for some fine arts classes at State.”

Katniss stared at him in surprise. “Fine art? Painting and drawing you mean? I didn’t know you did that.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t talk about it at school. I didn’t think it would do much for my rep as a wrestler and my mother thinks it’s a total waste of time. This way I can learn more and she has nothing to say about it.”

“I thought I was busy. I’m taking environmental engineering and working part time in a bar, keeping an eye on Prim.” She took another drink, watching Peeta over the top of her cup. He seemed to be distracted by a freckle on her shoulder, reaching out with an index finger to lightly draw circles around it. Normally, Katniss would have shrugged another person’s hands off her, but her skin was tingling under his touch, so she said nothing.

“And now you’re sitting in my kitchen.” He smiled softly.

“Your kitchen?”

“I answered an ad that Finn put up on a bulletin board on campus. This place is close to the culinary school, on the bus route to State and not far from the restaurant, so it’s perfect. Plus, Finn is great and the other guys are cool too.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Here in this house? Since September. I lived in the dorm at the culinary school last year.”

Katniss had a hundred questions; starting with, why haven’t I seen you around? At a party? At the grocery store? Why haven’t you come into the Hob like virtually every other student on campus? But she said nothing else. She just lifted her cup to her lips.

“You know,” he said, clearing his throat, but continuing to focus on drawing his circles. “I drove all over town that night, looking for you. I was worried about you. I wish you’d let me drive you home.”

Katniss put her cup down on the table, and stared down into the beer. “I needed to be alone,” she said just loud enough for him to hear it. “I was so embarrassed.”

“But not by me,” he said, sliding closer to her. The finger circling her shoulder had turned into a thumb stroking the back of her neck. Peeta took her chin with his other hand and turned her face to look at him. Their lips were only inches apart.

“No.” Her voice sounded husky. “Not by you.”

Peeta stroked her cheek and leaned closer still. “Did I miss my chance?” Katniss could feel his breath on her face. She licked her lips, preparing to bring an end to years of longing by closing the gap between them.

The door to the kitchen swung open. Music and laughter poured into the room, startling them back to an awareness of their surroundings. They sat back, but Peeta slid his arm around Katniss’s shoulders. She had to fight her body from melting against him.

“Peet! Look at you, chatting up a hottie! I didn’t know you had it in you, man,” Finnick wiggled his eyebrows at them on his way to the keg. Katniss tried to move away, but Peeta’s hand on her shoulder held her gently, but firmly in place. Finnick slid onto the bench across from them. His sea green eyes were dancing. Katniss couldn’t help thinking that he had to be one of the most stunning men she’d ever seen. No wonder Jo was so interested.

Peeta remembered his manners. “Finn, this is Katniss Everdeen. She’s from Panem too.”

Finnick grinned at Katniss. “We’ve met. Having fun, beautiful?” He raised her hand, kissing her knuckles like a chivalrous knight and then burst into laughter. “Peet! You should see your face. Relax, man. I’ve already got my hands full holding off Katniss’s equally hot friend in the other room.”

“My roommate,” Katniss explained to Peeta. She turned to Finn with one eyebrow cocked over a silver eye. “She’s a piece of work. She’ll have you wrapped around her little finger in no time.”

Finnick laughed again. “She is certainly trying, but this heart,” he said melodramatically clutching his chest, “already belongs to my Annie. Well, I better mingle.” He winked at them. “Do me a solid, Sugar, and tell your girl in there that I’m unavailable.” Finn wandered off to the dining room and a cheer broke out around the beer pong table.

Katniss frowned. “He’s got a girl?”

Peeta nodded. “Annie. I haven’t met her yet. She lives in Florida where they grew up. Finnick is crazy about her. They’re moving to California as soon as he graduates in the spring.”

“I guess I should tell her,” she sighed, sliding off the bench to pull her phone from her pocket. She quickly texted Jo.

**_KATNISS:_ ** _Hey, having fun? (10:41 p.m.)_

**_JO:_ ** _Oh yeah! Where r u? (10:42 p.m.)_

**_KATNISS:_ ** _Still in the kitchen with a friend from Panem. Any luck with Finn? (10:42 p.m.)_

**_JO:_ ** _L Not sure where he went (10:43 p.m.)_

Katniss bit her lip, considering her response. Jo couldn’t know he’d asked her to do this. She’d be humiliated.

**_KATNISS:_ ** _Prolly 4 the best. I hear he’s got a GF anyways. Not worth the drama!! (10:45 p.m.)_

**_JO:_ ** _Oh Brainless, it absolutely would be. But I don’t poach. (10:46 p.m.)_

Katniss slipped her phone back in her pocket. “Sorry about that.”

“Mission accomplished?”

Katniss nodded. “Well, I should get another drink,” she said, turning toward the keg.

Claiming he needed a refill too, Peeta slid out of the booth behind her, and took her hand again. Katniss looked down at their entwined fingers in surprise and he looked sheepish. “I guess I’m being kind of handsy, huh?”

Katniss shrugged. Normally, no one touched her. “I’ll allow it.”

“You’ll allow it?” At her nod, Peeta’s face lit up in a happy grin that did odd things to her stomach. “I let go of you over a year ago, and you disappeared. I’m a little afraid of how long it will be before I see you again if you walk away this time.”

She felt a flash of anger and tried to pull her hand away after all. She was not going to allow him to blame her for the worst night of her life. “I didn’t disappear, Peeta. I was in Panem that whole summer. You knew I’d just lost my two best friends and how embarrassed I was. But you didn’t call. Not even once.”

Katniss watched as the impact of her words washed away the playful, affectionate boy with whom she’d spent the last hour, and turned him into someone else; someone more serious and much more vulnerable than she would have expected.

“Katniss, can we talk? I’ve wanted to say some things to you for a long time.” Katniss gave Peeta an expectant look. “Not here,” he said. “I have an idea, come on.”

Peeta led her through the crowd back to the living room at the front of the house. As they walked up a staircase, Katniss felt a buzzing in her pocket, but her stomach was so full of butterflies that she ignored it. They stopped at a door at the end of the hall and Peeta fumbled with a key in the lock.

“I don’t usually keep this door locked, but Finn said I should, just in case,” he said, opening the door and flicking on the light. He gestured her inside, but Katniss stayed rooted to the floor outside the door.

“You brought me to your room.”

Peeta blushed and stammered. “Well, yeah. I mean, it’s the first place that I thought of.” His hand returned to the back of his neck while poked at the doorjamb with his toe. It reminded Katniss of a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, even more so when he peeked back up at her. “I just blew it, didn’t I?” She just looked at him. “I’d never hurt you, Katniss, but I get it. We can just talk out here if you want. It’s private enough.”

She still didn’t answer him. Instead, she gave into her curiosity and stuck her head inside the room. It was different than the boys’ rooms in the co-ed dorm where she’d lived with Jo the year before. He had the requisite beer and sports posters over his desk. His wrestling trophies lined the window sill. There was dust and clutter and what looked to be a pile of dirty laundry in the closet, but nowhere did she see a poster of a naked girl, or even a swimsuit model. Instead, Peeta’s walls were his art gallery.

Without thinking, she stepped inside. “Are all of these yours?” She marvelled at the huge modern piece hanging on the longest wall. “I love this,” she said, enthusiastically, peering at the brushstrokes and the layers upon layers of colour. “What do you call it?”

“Sunset.” And suddenly, she could see it. The yellow ball sinking below a thick dark uneven line representing horizon, the deep orange stretching and streaking across the canvass, growing ever lighter as it reached into a darkening sky.

There were others. A detailed painting of the woods back home. A portrait of his family. A still life of a loaf of bread fresh from the oven on a table next to green bottle stuffed haphazardly with dandelions. An impressionist-style painting of a girl in a green dress, leaning against a rail as she stared up at the night sky with her back to the artist and her chestnut hair streaming down her back.

Katniss looked at him with wide eyes. His pleaded for understanding and his explanation poured out in a rush.

“The assignment was to paint a moment you’ll never forget in the impressionist style. And… well, that’s the first thing I thought of. I followed you out of the gym that night, Katniss. I was desperate for a chance to be alone with you. Even if it was only for five minutes. You have no idea how much I wanted to ask you to go to that dance with me.” Katniss inhaled as a frisson of shock ran down her spine. He took her hands again. “I’d tried for years to work up the nerve to talk to you, to get to know you better so that I could ask you out, but I never could, and then it was graduation and I thought I’d missed my chance.”

“Why didn’t you?” Suddenly, Katniss realized she was glad they were alone in his room. She wanted to close the shutters and lock the world out.

One corner of his mouth crooked up. “You have no idea, the effect you have on me. I could barely say ‘excuse me’ to you when we passed in the hallway. Anyway, everyone thought you were dating Hawthorne.”

“I was watching you too,” she admitted. “But you were so popular and athletic. There were so many girls interested in you that I just figured you’d never look at someone like me.”

His hands left her own, gliding up her forearms until the stopped just below her elbow. “You were the only girl I was really interested in.”

“Come on, you didn’t notice any other girls?”

He grinned at her impishly. “Oh, I noticed just about all of the girls, but none of made a lasting impression but you.”

Katniss didn’t know who moved first, but they were so close now that their bodies were almost touching. He took her chin in his hand and lifted her eyes to his. She trembled as her heart flipped over.

“I couldn’t believe my luck that night. I finally had you in my arms. I was going to get the chance to tell you how I felt about you and I thought there was a remote possibility that maybe you liked me too. I was going to drive you home and hold your hand the whole way there and if you’d let me kiss you good night…” His voice trailed off as he stroked her cheek.

“If what, Peeta?” He swallowed and shook his head. “I guess I’ll just have to fill in the blanks myself.” She took Peeta’s face in her hands and closed the space between them. She felt Peeta freeze in shock as their lips met and she was afraid she’d made a mistake. Maybe he didn’t want this after all. Maybe she’d completely and irreparably screwed this up. Then Peeta moaned and gave himself over to the kiss, wrapping her tightly in his arms, parting her lips with his tongue.

Katniss felt her blood pounding in her ears as her hands slid along his jaw and into his hair. It was coarse and thick and tangled in her fingers. Katniss had kissed guys before, and it had been pleasant enough, but it had never felt like this. It had never made her hunger for more. She lost herself in the sensation of his tongue sliding against her own, his hands stroking her back. But before long, she felt Peeta take control of himself and step back. He held her hands and took a deep breath. His lips were swollen and his face flushed. Katniss’s heart was racing. She stepped toward him.

“Wait,” he gasped. Oh God, she had messed this up.

“What’s wrong?”

“You asked me a question, downstairs. I want to answer it.” He sat down on his bed and patted the space beside him. She sat down on the edge, more nervous than she thought possible.

“You wanted to know why I never called or came to see you.” She nodded. “Well, Katniss, think about it. When you walked out that night, you didn’t just walk out on Gale and Madge. You walked out on me too.” Katniss felt the floor drop out from under her. She’d been so angry, so hurt, she hadn’t once considered how it must have looked to Peeta. “I called out to you,” he said. “I chased you out of that gym and begged you to wait, but by the time I got out to the parking lot, you were gone.”

Katniss wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m so sorry, Peeta. Everyone was staring. I’d embarrassed you in front of your friends. People were staring at us. I needed to get out of there.”

Peeta put his arm around her in comfort and she laid her head on his shoulder. “You didn’t embarrass me in front of my friends. Delly did that, but not you. My friends were really pissed for us. Nothing would have happened with them to back us up. But then you left and I couldn’t find you. I looked for you all night, but I wasn’t even sure you’d get in the car. I didn’t know if you’d ever talk to me again. Besides, the phone works both ways you know. You could have called me, or come by the bakery.”

“Your mother hates me.”

“My mother hates everybody.” They both burst out laughing and when Katniss turned her face to Peeta’s she found herself staring at his lips. He traced hers with the pad of his thumb. “Katniss, I’m going to kiss you now and I’m going to warn you that I’ve wanted to do this for so long that I might not want to stop. I will if you ask me to, I promise. But if I’m not what you want, let’s go downstairs right now and forget that I ever said anything.”

She knew that she wouldn’t want to stop, but she thought it only fair that she warn him too. “I’ve been told that I’m not very good at this.”

“You seemed pretty good at it before. Maybe you just weren’t with the right person.”

She remembered the hunger she’d felt only a little while before. “Let’s find out.”

* * *

 

Peeta's heart was in his lips when they met hers, sweet, soft and full of promise. He held them there, briefly, before raining soft kisses across her cheeks, over the bridge of her nose to the other side. He kissed her forehead, her chin. When he finally brought his lips back down to hers, he heard, rather than felt, the sigh that escaped her lips and he took that moment to slip his tongue alongside hers. Soon, her hands returned to his hair, pulling him into her, demanding more. Eventually, she needed to catch her breath, and she lifted her mouth from his to nip along his jaw and worry his earlobe with her teeth. Peeta began to place a line of kisses along her neck and when he met where it joined with her collar bone, Katniss gasped and whimpered before kicking off her heels and turning her body so that she straddled his lap. His hands reached down to cup the cheeks of her rear end and pull her to him.

Her mini skirt had hiked up past her hips and when his hands met bare flesh, he raised his head and looked at her with wide eyes. “Katniss?”

She shrugged. “This skirt is really form fitting and I hate thongs.”

With an agility born from years of wrestling, Peeta twisted his body and tossed her beneath him so that he was lying between her legs. He was hard and ready for her. His eyes were dark and full of fire. “You’ve been sitting beside me all night with nothing on under that skirt?” She gave a throaty chuckle and shrugged again. Peeta groaned and lowered his head to her chest. “You’re going to kill me.”

His fingers slipped under the hem of her silk top and began sliding it up her belly. His lips followed behind it, kissing along the top of her skirt, circling her navel with his tongue and then along her sternum to the wire of her bra. He looked up at her then, seeking her approval, and meeting no resistance, slid the top over her head and threw it onto the floor before pulling off his own. Katniss reached her hand out to stroke his chest. His body was broad and strong. Fine blonde hair covered his breast bone and travelled down his belly in an ever thinning line until it disappeared inside his jeans. When skin met skin for the first time, each of them marvelled at how the reality of them together was so much better than they imagined separately.

Katniss watched as he gazed down at her before using his lips to begin a journey along the cups of her red silk bra. “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed against her skin. Their mouths met again, as he slid her bra straps off of her shoulders and reached behind her to unfasten it but found nothing.

“Here,” she said, flicking the jewelled clasp between her breasts, and the bra fell open to him. He placed a kiss where the jewel had been before cupping each of them, rubbing the dusky peaks with his thumbs and causing her to whimper and thrust her hips against the fly of his jeans. When Peeta’s mouth replaced his thumb, Katniss’s whimper turned into a deep-throated moan as she held his head in place and rubbed against his hardness. His hand drifted down her side, over the skirt that bunched and twisted around her waist, to stroke her hip before skimming toward her centre.

He raised his head and his eyes were gleaming like sapphire. “Still OK?” She nodded. “Tell me what you want.”

She had to wrench it out. “Touch me, Peeta. Please.”

Katniss closed her eyes and arched her neck as his fingers slipped down between her folds, exploring her gently, watching for her reaction. Her eyes flew open and she cried out when he found her clit.

“There?” he asked, still carefully gauging her response. She nodded and spread her legs further to give him better access. His fingers began moving in steady circles around the little ball of nerves. “God, Katniss, you are so wet.” She moaned again and began to move her hips in time with his ministrations. She tried to reach for the button of his jeans, so that he could share in the pleasure but he pulled away. “Not yet,” he said. “I’ve imagined this a million times and I want to make it last.”

He returned his mouth to her breast and Katniss felt rational thought fade away as all focus centred on that spot at her core that was compressing ever tighter, coiled like a spring, eager for release. She was writhing against his hand, her breath shallow when she felt the wave wash over her. “Peeta, I’m coming,” she called out. At her words, Peeta plunged two fingers inside her, curving them so that they nearly touched the thumb that continued to stroke her clit. She twisted the cover of his bed in her hands as her back left the bed. He covered her mouth with his own to swallow her scream.

She opened her eyes when she came back to Earth, and he was still watching her. His eyes gleamed with satisfaction and crooked grin on his face. He nudged her head aside with his own so that he could kiss her neck. “I thought you said you weren’t any good at this,” he whispered mischievously.

Katniss pulled her head away so that she could gaze at him across the pillow. “I haven’t done much of anything yet,” she said, quirking up one eyebrow, and reaching out to tickle his side. Peeta gave a little yelp and let go just long enough for Katniss to jump off the bed and slither out of what was left of her clothing. She crawled back onto the bed on her hands and knees. With him below her, she leaned in for a fast, hot kiss and then scowled.

“You have too many clothes on,” she complained. Her lips blazed a trail along his neck and down his body to his bulging jeans. She clutched at him through the fabric and he groaned. Deftly, she flicked them open and pulled them and his boxer briefs over his hips and down to his knees. Peeta promptly kicked them and his socks to the floor. Giving him a sly grin, she slithered back up his body and brought her lips back to his. She could feel his cock pulsing against her belly and she sat up so that she could take him in hand and bring him the pleasure he had shown her. He watched her swirl her thumb over its moist tip before sliding her hand down and squeezing firmly at the base. He gave a short moan of pleasure before sitting up and kissing her deeply.

“That’s not the way I want this to end. You’ll allow it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Make love to me, Peeta.”

He fell back against the pillows, reaching into his nightstand and pulled out a foil package. Katniss took it from him and quickly sheathed him. He rose back up and carefully cradled her head in his hands, once again kissing her softly before guiding her back down to the bed. He hovered above her watching her face as though committing it to memory and then slowly filled her. Katniss watched his head fall back in pleasure and then he joined his hands with her own above his head. He kissed her deeply and then whispered in her ear. “Fuck, Katniss. You feel so good.”

They began to rock, joined in every place possible, gaining speed as they sped toward a finish line in race neither had dared to hope they would run. Fantasy and reality fused. Every thrust sent a quick thrill through Katniss’s body, still thrumming from her earlier release. Faster. Harder. More, it demanded. Peeta sat back on his heels, changing the angle to bring her more pleasure and reached down to stroke her clit again. Katniss felt the pleasure building inside her again. Her entire body was poised to leap off the cliff.

“Are you ready?” she asked him. He nodded. “Come with me this time,” she begged, and with another thrust they fell together.

* * *

 

Peeta awoke to the sun streaming in the window. At some point in the night, he and Katniss had crawled under the covers and she curled up on his chest, her hand over his heart. She was still there, breathing softly, her naked body pressed against his own. Her dark hair glowed in the morning light and he stroked the top of her head before running his fingers through the locks as far as he could reach. She murmured and nestled closer, causing his heart to swell in his chest.

He had finally stopped imagining them together, stopped looking for her around every corner, only to find her standing in his home last night. And now in his bed. It defied belief. But it was real. And now that he had her, Peeta allowed himself to hope that they were together at last. A couple in love. At least, one of them was, because he was a goner and had been since he was five years old.

When she finally woke, her grey eyes were still full of dreams. Her smile was sleepy, if a bit shy. “Hi.”

Peeta kissed her forehead. “Hi yourself.”

“I can’t remember the last time I slept that well. What time is it?”

Peeta looked over her head to the clock on his bedside table. “Umm. About 9:30.”

Her eyes became as round as moons and she jumped out of bed. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” She rummaged through the pile of clothes they’d left on the floor and turned up her skirt

Peeta sat up in bed, bewildered. “Katniss, what’s wrong?”

“I’ve gotta go home. Prim will be home any minute. I can’t let her catch me coming in after being out all night.” Katniss shimmied into the skirt and then reached down for her bra and blouse.

Peeta started to throw back the covers. “Ok. Just give me a minute to get dressed. I’ll take you home.”

“No!” She almost shouted it. Peeta sat back, alarmed, watching as she hurriedly threw on the rest of her clothes.

“No, Peeta. That’ll just make it worse. No. I’ll just hail a cab downstairs. Where the hell is my phone?” She found it blinking on the floor and flicked it open. Eight messages from Jo.

**_JO:_ ** _Who’s the hottie? (10:55 p.m.)_

**_JO:_ ** _F say that was Peeta? THE PEETA? (11:28)_

**_JO:_ ** _U hooking up with him? Heading home soon (11:42 p.m.)_

**_JO:_ ** _Going home. (11:59 p.m.)_

**_JO:_ ** _U need 2 call/txt me! (2:08 a.m.)_

**_JO:_ ** _U broke our rule. Worrying._ _L (5:27 a.m.)_

**_JO:_ ** _Calling cops if u not home soon (9:00 a.m)_

“Damn. Jo is freaking out. I’ve really gotta go. What’s your cell number?” Peeta dictated the number to her and then heard his phone buzz over on his desk. “There, now you’ve got mine. Call me, OK?” She rushed back to the bed, brushed his lips with her own, and then she was gone.

Peeta watched his bedroom door close while the glow of happiness that had been surrounding his heart faded away and his chest started to ache. He threw himself back against the pillows and looked up at the ceiling. For the second time in his life, he’d held the girl of his dreams in his arms and then watched her rush away because of another man. Why in the hell hadn’t she told him about Joe?

 


	6. Chasing Katniss Everdeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beach scene in this chapter was first published as part of as Prompts in Panem’s Everlark Dreamscape Week -- Day 3 (Explosions).

Peeta bent down and tightened the laces on his sneakers before setting out along the wooden boardwalk in front of his beachfront suite. Baker’s hours were hard to give up, it seemed, even in the land of the afternoon siesta. He figured he had time to log a few miles along the shore and grab a shower before finding some breakfast. He saw her as soon as his running shoes hit the sand. She was deep into a lunge, the back knee of her black spandex shorts almost level with the beach. She stood up, shook out her white tank, and adjusted the strap of black sports bra that peeped out from under it. “Katniss!” He called out, running toward the surf to meet her. She glanced his way and then started down the beach without him.

Peeta knew a dare when he saw one, so he followed her. It wasn’t long before she looked over her shoulder and saw that he wasn’t giving up. She whipped one earbud out of her ear and jogged in place, waiting for him.

“Katniss. Hey,” he said as he pulled up beside her. “Mind if I join you?”

She scowled. Damn, but he’d missed that. “It’s a big beach, Mellark. Do whatever you want, but if you’re coming with me, keep up.”

He grinned at her and plugged in his own earbuds. “Likewise, Everdeen.” They slipped easily into a rhythm, their feet beating in perfect time against the sand in their early morning light. Other than a few other determined runners, they were alone. Peeta wondered, briefly, if they looked like a couple to the people they passed. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind as quickly as it came to him. Instead, he looked out at the sun rising over the ocean, committing the scene to memory. He’d already made a commitment to himself to set his easel back up when he got home and he wondered how long he’d have to play with his reds, blues and yellows to be able to capture all the gradients of colour he was seeing in the sky and in the water on his canvas. The shore birds tilted and soared over head. One stooped into a steep dive to fish for his breakfast and then skimmed the surface of the water before lifting back up into the air. Thinking that Katniss would enjoy watching the birds, he turned to tap her on the shoulder, but found her eyes were already on him. Caught staring, she blushed and turned away. Peeta’s heart and his feet stumbled at the same time, but he managed to keep moving forward.

After about 20 minutes, Katniss turned and the two of them retraced their steps back toward the resort. Peeta could feel beads of sweat rolling down his back and his heart was beating at a steady pace. He’d run this fast before, but not for such an extended period and his legs were burning. Still, he refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing him quit. Katniss’s skin was glistening and the tendrils of hair that had escaped her braid were damp and curling with perspiration, but she showed no signs of slowing down. When the resort came into view she gave him a wicked grin and moved into a sprint. Peeta dug down deep and somehow found the strength to keep going. They covered the distance to their starting point in less than half of the time it took to begin with.  They walked in circles for a few minutes, kicking up sand, trying to catch their breath and allowing their heart rates to return to normal. Katniss began to move in a series of stretches and lunges, including one that involved bending at the waist to grab her ankles that sent his heart rate flying again.

She finally spoke to him while her head was still between her ankles. “Not too shabby, Peeta.” She stood up and grinned at him. “I knew you were strong, but I didn’t expect you’d be able to keep up with me. I’m pretty fast.”

His mouth moved before his brain had time to filter the thought. “Chasing after Katniss Everdeen seems to be the story of my life.” It sounded pathetic and slightly bitter.

Katniss stood gaping at him, her eyes widened to silver moons. He prepared himself for her to walk away again. Indecision flitted across her face and then her heels sank into the sand. Her voice was soft, but determined, velvet over steel.

“Tell me this, Peeta. Just why is a newly married man running down a beach with me at dawn? I’ve never given a minute’s thought to marriage, but I can tell you that any man who married me would have better things to do at this hour of the morning. Where is your wife?” The word hissed across her lips.

_Out with it, then._ “Katniss, I don’t have a wife.” He’d expected shock. He was prepared for dismay. He was blown away by the explosion.

“What! What the hell, Peeta? We were sitting in those chairs just yesterday,” she descended upon him, pointing down the beach a few hundred yards. Her temper swirled around her, girding her for battle. “I saw you for the first time in nine years and you told me you were here on your honeymoon.” The finger was now trained on him, holding him in her crosshairs. “Nine years ago, I left your bedroom thinking we might really have something. Clearly, you didn’t mean anything you said that night because you didn’t call. You didn’t even send a goddamn text message. And yesterday, the first time you have spoken to me in all that time, you told me a lie!”

The slap was verbal, but Peeta felt it all the same. Still, he wasn’t inclined to apologize. Not after what she’d done. “Katniss, I didn’t say I was married. I said I was on my honeymoon. If you’d stuck around for 10 minutes, instead of running off the way you always do, you would have heard the rest of the story. But for you to call me a liar… That’s really rich coming from you. After everything I told you about prom night, after I put all my feelings for you out there, I still didn’t even rate the truth from you.”

“Peeta, what on Earth are you talking about?”

“Let me know when you figure it out.”

This time, Peeta was the one who walked away.

* * *

 

“What do you mean there’s a problem with my reservation?” The annoyance in Katniss’s voice carried across the front garden of the resort, catching the attention of the other guests. Let them look, Katniss decided. She was past caring what people thought about her anymore. And really, how could their gawking make her day any worse? “I booked this yesterday,” she snapped. “The concierge assured me there was a still a buggy available for me. What could possibly have changed since then?”

“I’m very sorry, Senorita Everdeen,” said the van driver, who was anything but apologetic. Katniss wanted to kick him. “We had another couple book a buggy yesterday. I was asked to tell you that since we have an odd number of tickets sold, we’ve assigned you a seat with the tour guide.”

“That’s unacceptable. I was told I would have the buggy to myself.”

“We are very sorry, Senorita, but you only booked one ticket. You need to book two to be guaranteed your own vehicle. We have one space available with the tour guide. If that is, as you say, unacceptable, we will be happy to refund your ticket or book you in for another day.”

Ignoring her urge to do the man bodily harm, Katniss turned on her heel and started to storm back toward the resort. She didn’t really care about the buggy ride but it was the best way to travel through the jungle to the cenotes, the underground pools that were sacred to the Mayan people. Her plan to explore the cavern and swim in the crystal clear water had been the only thing to soothe her foul mood after her argument on the beach with Peeta early this morning. Now she’d have to travel with a stranger or pay for two seats tomorrow.

“Katniss.”

She stopped but she didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to. Peeta again. Damn. Why was he everywhere? Why wouldn’t he just leave her alone? She’d spent the whole day yesterday and most of the night reliving their night in his bed so long ago; how he’d made her feel and how much she’d ached when she realized that he wasn’t going to call. When she finally gave up trying to sleep around dawn and went out for a run, he’d intruded on that too, answering her attempt to be friendly with bitterness and accusations that didn’t make any sense. She knew what he thought of her shouldn’t matter, but it did. It probably always would.

“C’mon, Katniss, please.”

Peeta’s voice had lost the angry, judgmental tone it held at sunrise. Now he just sounded tired and a little sad.

“Katniss. Look at me, at least.”

She turned on her heel to see him lounging in the shade against the van that had arrived to pick them up. His t-shirt was molded to his body over a pair of board shorts and his unruly curls were peeking out from under a ball cap. He drummed his fingers against the side of the van.

“I, uh, have an extra seat in my buggy if you want to come with me.” She crossed her arms as she approached him, a scowl still fixed on her face. He shrugged. “I just thought you could get your money back and still go on the excursion.” He swallowed. “And maybe it would give us a chance to talk, explain a few things.”

“I don’t owe you anything, Peeta, least of all an explanation.”

Peeta lifted his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, sparking a memory of him making the very same gesture while she watched from the side of the gym. He exhaled through his teeth. “Katniss, I’m trying here. I don’t want to leave things between us like this. Would it really be that hard to spend the day with me?”

_Harder than you know._ She sighed. She really wanted to see a cenote, and it wouldn’t hurt to have it out with Peeta once and for all. “Fine. Let’s go give the driver the good news.”

She sat between him and another guest on the bench seat of the van while it raced toward the ranch where the excursion was taking place. Her body, closer to his than it had been since _that_ night, betrayed her the way it always did when he was around by revelling in his proximity and sending her hormones skittering. He’d thrown his arm over the back of the seat to give her more room and her traitorous heart kept remembering how welcome it had felt around her shoulders. He even smelled the same. She noticed that Peeta didn’t seem to be experiencing the same conflict. He just watched the world fly by outside the van window, his arm hanging down behind her. The van veered off the highway onto a dirt road and then promptly hit a pothole. Katniss careened into Peeta, who instinctively brought his arm around her.

“You OK?” She nodded. His hand flexed around her shoulder and her heart gave a happy flutter. There was a sense of rightness to being with Peeta that always seemed to override her natural instinct for self-preservation. She wished that his dark sunglasses weren’t covering his eyes. It made it harder to know what he was thinking. He licked his lips nervously before giving her shoulder another squeeze and dropping his arm behind the seat again. Katniss sighed and shifted away, not noticing when his gaze followed her movement or the frown that flickered across his face before it once again smoothed into an impassive mask and returned to watching out the window.

It wasn’t until they’d arrived at the ranch and the buggies roared to life around them that they realized their plan to talk things out on this trek wasn’t going to work. Peeta stuck the key into the buggy’s ignition with an apologetic half smile. “Ready?” He had to shout at her to be heard. She nodded and offered him a thumbs up. They both pulled the bandanas they’d been provided over their noses and bombed down the dusty road with everyone else.

The foliage grew thicker and greener the deeper the tour group plunged into the Mexican jungle. Katniss relaxed as the trees stretched above her, forming emerald canopy overhead. She glanced at Peeta. His ball cap was turned backwards to keep it from blowing away and the scarf had fallen down from his face. A relaxed smile played across his lips as he steered the buggy along the jungle road. He glanced at her and grinned. “Hang on!” Her eyes flitted back to the road, which had turned into a mud hole while her attention had been elsewhere. Peeta whooped and Katniss screamed as the vehicle plunged into the muck at top speed. Dirty water flew high into the air, leaving them soaked and spattered. The buggy skidded as it fought for a hold on solid ground on the other side of the mess. Katniss held the rollbars in a death grip.

She had to yell to be heard over the rumble of the buggy’s engine. “Peeta, you are so going to pay for that!”

He grinned, and Katniss caught a flash of white teeth in his dirty face. “Relax, Everdeen. Live a little.”

The caravan of buggies slowed down as they approached a jungle village where houses were perched high in the trees. When it stopped, children ran out from the trees to greet them with broad smiles and eager hands in search of candy. Peeta obliged them as Katniss scampered up a ladder and disappeared into the branches to explore one of the houses. He was waiting at the bottom when she descended, a content smile on her face.

“Did you like it?”

She nodded as they started back toward the buggies. “After my dad died and everything got – bad -- at home,” she frowned, surprised to find herself confiding in Peeta but deciding to carry on, “I used to daydream about taking Prim out into the woods and living off the land in a little house. It’s kind of a crazy idea, I know, especially in Pennsylvania, but it was pretty appealing to a 14-year-old with way too much responsibility and an empty stomach.”

Peeta stopped. Katniss watched his brow furrow, but it was regret, not pity that she saw in his face. “I knew you guys were struggling, Katniss, but I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“I couldn’t let anyone know because I was afraid they’d look into why my mother wasn’t working and then Prim and I would be separated and dumped into foster homes. I couldn’t let that happen.”

He frowned then. “Believe me, I get it.” Katniss recalled the bruises she’d seen on Peeta’s face and attributed to three boys living under the same roof, and wondered if it was possible that he truly did understand. She reached out and squeezed his hand before resuming their walk toward the vehicles. Peeta laced his fingers through hers and her stomach joined her heart in its usual Peeta-related gymnastics routine.

“I couldn’t hide it from the Hawthornes though. They were right next door and knew exactly how much money the survivor’s benefits brought in. It’s why Gale and I got to be so close. His mother worked constantly to take care of all four kids. It just made sense for the two of us to divide and conquer. One of us would watch the kids while the other picked up an odd job. When we were both old enough to get real part-time jobs, we‘d try to schedule our shifts to make sure one of us was always around.”

When they reached the buggy, Peeta dropped her hand to pull the key from his pocket. Katniss snatched it from him. “My turn,” she teased and hopped into the driver’s seat. Peeta chuckled as he climbed in beside her. “Hold on to your hat, Mellark. It’s payback time.” Katniss hit the gas and the buggy shot down the trail again, flying over bumps and splashing through puddles until the tour guide pulled his vehicle to a stop at the cenote. Everyone got out and surrounded him at the edge of the sinkhole.

“This is a cenote,” he said, carefully pronouncing it say-no-tay. He explained that the Yucatan peninsula has no surface rivers or streams and is home to three of the world’s largest underwater systems. “Sometimes the cave ceiling collapses giving us a glimpse of the underwater world below our feet. In ancient times, the cenotes were the only source of fresh water during a dry spell. Our ancestors considered them to be entrances to the underworld where the gods lived and spirits remained after their deaths.”

Katniss peered down at the cavern and its aquamarine water. Tree roots were suspended in midair like a ghostly curtain swaying in the breeze. Stalactites and stalagmites reached for each other, ancient stone fingers seeking to intermingle. Peeta’s hand dropped on her shoulder as he joined her at the edge. “It seems like another planet down there,” he murmured.

The tour guide piped up again. “There are two ways down to the cenote and only one way up. You can either ride the zipline down or you can take the steps, but you will have to climb the steps on your way back up. Now, who wants to be first to try the zipline?”

Katniss was quick to volunteer and Peeta stood close by as they fitted her with the harness and safety helmet.

“Senor, would you like me to take a picture of you and your girlfriend before she jumps?”

Katniss spoke up. “Oh, he’s not my…,”

“We’d love a picture,” said Peeta, his voice drowning her protests, and passed his phone to the tour guide before stepping up beside her. He slipped his arm around her waist. Katniss huffed beside him. “Smile, Sweetheart,” he teased as the flash blinked.

The tour guide directed Katniss to the platform and attached her harness to the wire. Katniss gave the guide a bone-melting smile. Living with Jo had taught her a few things. “Be sure Peeta’s harness is well secured. I wouldn’t want to see him hurt,” she purred at the guide who was putty in her hands.

“Of course, senorita. We’ll keep him safe for you.”

Peeta did not look enthusiastic about ziplining. “Oh, well, I planned on walking down.”

Katniss gave him a sly grin, not unlike one she’d once shot him in the dark. “Relax, Sweetheart. Live a little.” She jumped off the edge and sailed smoothly down the zipline, skimming the water before coming to a stop on the other side, where another guide help her disconnect. She looked up to see Peeta descending. Before long, he was being unhooked from the line.

She shot him a cheeky grin when he shook his head at her. “I didn’t know you could be such a pain, Katniss.”

“Hi Honey,” she chirped, tossing her bandana to the ground before whipping off her tank top and shorts to reveal a forest green one-piece underneath. She felt his eyes sweep over the way it cut high over her hips and scooped down low on her back, emphasizing her slim waist and strong legs. “Ready to swim?”

“Ready when you are.” He shrugged out of his t-shirt and tossed it onto her pile of clothes along with his scarf and cap. He sweaty and scruffy from the manic drive through the humid jungle. She supressed an urge to sink her fingers into his hair and bite the sensitive spot she remembered was located just under his jaw. Why did he have to go around looking like the sexiest thing ever to walk on two legs? It wasn’t fair, really, that he could make her ache like this when so much between them was unresolved. She knew that he could feel it too, this pull of attraction she’d never felt with anyone else. He brushed what she supposed was mud from her cheek and gave her a crooked grin. “Remember,” he whispered, “you’re supposed to be my girlfriend, so it’s all right to kiss me any time you feel like it.” He gave her braid a gentle tug.

She jerked back, but couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

They glanced over at the zipline. The crowd was building around it now as the rest of their tour group made their way to the bottom. The teasing look dropped from Peeta’s face. “We really need to talk.” He reached out for her hand again. She let him take it.

“We do.” She felt the feather light touch of his thumb brushing over her knuckles.

He looked back at the zipline. “Just not now.”

“No. Not now.”

He brought her knuckles to his lips and mischief danced in his eyes as he watched her over them. “But first, we swim!” With an agility born from years of wrestling, he grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder like the sacks of flour he carried in the family bakery. She screeched and pounded on her back with her fists. Rather than put her down, Peeta ran toward the water and jumped in.

He let go of her the minute they hit the water and Katniss surfaced, sputtering, a few feet away from him. Her arm slapped across the water, sending a small wave splashing into his face. “I can’t believe you did that!”

He shrugged and wiped his face as he tread water. “I couldn’t help myself.” He swam the short distance between them, water dripping from his hair, his face unreadable. “Was it worth it? Driving out here with me?”

She felt the word yes form in the back of her throat, but couldn’t make it cross her lips. She looked around the cavern instead. “It’s beautiful, but not in an ordinary way, you know? The beach at the resort is gorgeous, but there are lots of nice beaches. There’s something unique about this place that just draws you in. Does that make sense?”

“To me? Completely.”

They swam together in the cave pool, taking turns with the snorkel they borrowed from the tour guides. Eventually, they got cold and explored the rest of the cave hand-in-hand before collecting their clothes and climbing back up the steps to dry off in the sun. Sitting on the jungle floor, they ate sandwiches and drank Coronas provided by the tour guides while they waited for the rest of the tour group to make their way back up the steps. Katniss closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun as her body relaxed. She laid back against the ground and then turned to look at Peeta. He was watching her from behind his sunglasses again.

The tour guide chose that moment to call them back to the buggies and soon they were rumbling back toward the ranch and then herded back into the van. This time, when she slid across the bench seat toward Peeta, he reached out for her, wrapping her in the crook of his arm the way she’d imagined that morning. She settled her head on his shoulder and reached up to link his fingers with her own.

He laid his cheek on the top of her head and sighed, playing with the fingers of her hand that was resting on his knee. “I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live it in forever.”

She could only agree with him and so she let the word slip out. “Okay.”

His arm tightened around her and his lips were in her hair. “Then you’ll allow it?”

“I’ll allow it.”


	7. Conpletely, Irreversibly Yours

Katniss was just stepping out of the shower when she heard her cell phone ping in the other room. She wrapped herself in an oversize towel and padded into the bedroom. She picked it up and found a text with an attachment from a Panem number that she didn’t recognize.

 **_1-758-623-3965:_ ** _Hi. (5:30 p.m.)_

She opened the attachment and found the picture that the tour guide snapped that morning before she rode the zip line down to the cenote. She and Peeta were grinning broadly like they really were a couple on vacation and not just acting for an afternoon. She texted him back.

 **_Katniss:_ ** _Thanks. (5:37 p.m.)_

She was instantly annoyed by her communication skills.

 **_Katniss:_  ** :) _(5:37 p.m.)_

Lame, lame, lame. She tried again.

 **_Katniss:_ ** _It was a good day. Thanks for letting me tag along with you. (5:38 p.m.)_

It wasn’t long before she had an answer.

 **_1-758-623-3965:_ ** _It was._ _:) You’re welcome. (5:39 p.m.)_

She was back in the bathroom brushing her hair out when she heard the phone ping again.

 **_1-758-623-3965:_ ** _Is it creepy that I’ve still got your number in my phone? (5:45 p.m.)_

If there was a right answer to that question, Katniss wasn’t sure what it was, so she tossed the phone down and went back to drying her hair. When she re-emerged, her hair falling like a dark cloud over her shoulders, the phone was blinking again.

 **_1-758-623-3965:_ ** _Hello? (5:50 p.m.)_

 **_1-758-623-3965:_ ** _You’re not answering. It IS creepy, isn’t it? (6:01 p.m.)_

She smirked. Peeta was nervous. It probably wasn’t very nice of her to enjoy his discomfort, but – oh well. It gave her a little thrill to think that he cared about her opinion of him. That had to mean something. Didn’t it? She saved his number in her contacts and put him out of his misery.

 **_Katniss:_ ** _What’s weirder? That you still have my number or that my number hasn’t changed in a decade? (6:05 p.m.)_

She dropped the phone on the bed and went to dig something out of the closet to wear, but she’d barely gotten the door open when the phone pinged again. She dived onto the bed and picked it back up.

 **_Peeta:_ ** _LOL. Guess I can’t tell you I lost your number now, huh? (6:06 p.m.)_

 **_Katniss:_ ** _Nope. (6:06 p.m.)_

The answer was probably too abrupt, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook for not calling. She flipped over on her back, watching the little screen and waiting for his response bubble to pop up. She tapped her fingers on the bed and sighed. Five minutes passed before Katniss decided that he’d either tired of the banter or she’d killed the mood. She put the phone down and went back to the closet, pondering her options before pulling out a coral coloured sundress. Her back was turned when the phone signalled that another message had come in.

 **_Peeta:_ ** _So what are your plans for tonight? (6:18 p.m.)_

She hadn’t wrecked it after all, she realized just moments before her nerves began a full-frontal attack. She paced back and forth across the room. Katniss knew where Peeta’s line of questioning was headed. A dinner invitation. If she said yes, then they would, inevitably, have to talk it out. If she said no, whatever she and Peeta had managed to rekindle on the excursion was over, permanently. Then again, if she said yes and their talk went badly, it was over anyway. With their track record, that was probably what would happen. She should just say no and spare herself the indigestion.

She took a deep breath and replied to him.

 **_Katniss:_ ** _Dinner and then I’ve got a hot date with my mini bar. (6:24 p.m.)_

 **_Peeta:_ ** _I’ve got a reservation at the Mexican restaurant tonight. Care to join me? (6:25 p.m.)_

 **_Katniss:_ ** _Are you trying to make my mini bar jealous? (6:25 p.m.)_

 **_Peeta:_ ** _LMAO. I know I’m no competition for the mini bar, but we should finally talk. (6:26 p.m.)_

So… this was happening, then. She typed out her answer.

 **_Katniss:_ ** _You don’t have much competition anywhere. Okay. Mexican sounds good. When?_

Her hand shook a bit as her finger hovered over send. The message revealed quite a lot. She bit her lip and pressed the button. It was gone. He replied immediately.

 **_Peeta:_ ** _7:30. It’s a date. See you then. (6:29 p.m.)_

Katniss flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. A date. They were going on a date. Her heart pounded in her ears. Just for a moment, Katniss let her inner 18-year-old girl off her leash. She felt silly and giddy and, my God, it felt good.

In his palatial honeymoon suite near the beach, Peeta grinned goofily at his phone. A date. He finally had a date with Katniss Everdeen.

* * *

 

When Peeta stepped onto the tile foyer of the hacienda-style restaurant, he saw that she had already arrived. Her back was bare and her hair hung in soft waves, curling just slightly where it fell below her shoulder blades. His hand had almost made contact with her shoulder when he worried that he shouldn’t. He softly spoke her name.

She turned to face him, the gauzy skirt of the coral halter dress swirling around her thighs. She smiled at him nervously. The thousand butterflies in his stomach whispered that he knew just how she felt.

“You look beautiful. Perfect.”

She frowned a little. “No. I’m not.”

Peeta took her hands and stepped back, holding her at arms’ length, his right eyebrow crooked up as he scrutinized her from top to bottom. He shook his head and frowned. “You’re right. Something’s missing.”

Ah-ha. There was the sexy scowl again. “Peeta! I can’t believe you just said that.”

He let go of her hands and strode to a vase of flowers on a table nearby, plucking out a delicate orchid. He tucked it behind her ear before once again studying her with an appraising eye. He nodded before closing the gap between them and bringing her hand to his lips.

“There. Now you’re perfect.”

A laugh bubbled out of her. “You did that this morning too. Finnick’s manoeuver.””

He gave her a confused look. “What do you mean?”

“The hand-kissing thing. Finnick did that the night of the party. It’s the only other time it’s ever happened to me.”

Peeta chuckled. “I’d forgotten about that. I wanted to kill him. Just about every girl in the place was throwing herself at him and he was putting the moves on mine.”

“Peeta, I wasn’t… I mean, I’ve never been…”

He smiled at her. “Let’s go see if our table’s ready.” He urged her toward the maitre’d, flattening his palm against the small of her back and an unexpected jolt of heat coursed through him. He was still feeling its effects when they were seated at their table on the breezeway of the terrace. He spun the stem of his water glass between his fingers as he studied the dark wooden beams on the high ceiling that were set off by the stucco walls and opulent furnishings with iron finishes. Palms of varying heights were planted in pottery and discreetly placed to give restaurant patrons privacy. He could see the sun setting through the archway that led to a balcony and then down to the beach.

“Peeta, what are you doing?”

Peeta turned to see Katniss peering at him with her brow furrowed. “Oh. Sorry. I’m always looking for new ideas for the restaurant. I like the way they’ve used plants and placed the tables strategically so that guests have the illusion of privacy, but the wait staff can still see them well enough to be able to anticipate their needs.”

Katniss looked even more confused. “Restaurant? I thought your father owned a bakery.”

He felt a stab of pain at the mention of his father, but Peeta supposed it was all part of the story he needed to tell her tonight. The waiter arrived to take their drink orders and then brought them each a Corona with a wedge of lime stuck in the top of the open bottle. Peeta sipped his beer and wondered where to start. “I have a restaurant. Well, technically, Ryan and I do.”

“Really?” She sounded surprised, which annoyed him a little. What did she think? That he’d been kneading dough the back room for the last nine years? Things change, even in a relatively small town like Panem.

“Let’s start with you,” he suggested. “The last I heard, you and Prim were living with a roommate and you were going to school and working in a bar.”

“There’s not much to tell, really. We kept the crappy apartment until we graduated. Then I got a job at Abernathy Environmental and we got a bigger place in a better part of town.”

“Do you like it? The job?”

She shrugged. “The owner is an alcoholic and completely unpleasant, but absolutely brilliant in a devious, serial killer kind of way. He doesn’t seem to like me very much, but we understand each other.” She frowned and wrinkled her nose. “What does that say about me, anyway?” Peeta laughed as she shook her head ruefully. “He’s got me working on big industrial projects. You know the new pharmaceutical plant Victory Pharma built back home?”

He nodded. “Sure. Half the town works there now. My brother Brandon is a day shift supervisor.”

“I was involved with that. I helped develop a waste disposal system to prevent chemical contaminants from leaching into the water system.”

Peeta wasn’t surprised she was doing so well. Katniss had always been smart. “I can’t believe you were in Panem working on the plant and I didn’t hear about it. The whole town should have been buzzing with the news that you were back.”

Katniss shook her head and took a long drink of her beer. “That’s because I wasn’t there. We were just consultants on the project. I reviewed the plans and looked at the hydrology of the area, provided some advice.”

Peeta brought his bottle toward his lips, stopping just before he took a drink. “So you didn’t do much, then. Just protected our hometown’s drinking water from your desk in the big city. Kept us from glowing green and growing extra appendages. All in a day’s work.”

Katniss choked on her beer as she started to laugh in mid-swallow. “Something like that,” she croaked.

“It can’t have been easy, though, Katniss.”

“What being a superhero?” Peeta snorted and covered his mouth with the back of his hand before swallowing. She grinned at him and heaved a melodramatic sigh. “I have to tell you, Peeta, I get tired of all of the public appearances, but that’s just the price of glory, I guess.”

Peeta laughed, loud and long, his shoulders shaking under his dinner jacket. “Oh my God, you almost made me spit my beer all over the table. I didn’t realize you were so funny.”

Katniss rolled her eyes. “I’m so not.”

“You are,” he insisted. “It makes me like you even more than I did before, and well, that’s saying quite a lot.” Katniss flushed, the tell-tale pinkness rushing up neck to her cheeks. She picked up her beer and looked toward the water. Peeta licked his lips nervously and started over. “Anyway, that’s not what I meant. I was trying to say it must have been tough to take care of Prim all on your own while putting yourself through school.”

“I couldn’t have done it without my roommate, Johanna. We watched out for each other. She helped me take care of Prim.” She picked up her lime wedge, forced it down the neck of the bottle and then spun the beer on the table. “Jo’s a complete pain in the ass, but she’s my best friend. More than that really. We’re family. ”

Peeta felt like she’d pulled his chair out from under him. The mysterious Joe was her roommate. Her female roommate, Johanna. Katniss was going to be furious with him. And he would deserve it for doubting her. For thinking she was capable of that. Why hadn’t he just asked her at that exact moment and not spent three days convincing himself that it was a perfectly reasonable question? If he’d done it then, before the call from his brother, everything would be different.

“Peeta?” Katniss was looking at him curiously from the other side of the table. “Where’d you go?”

He shook his head to clear it. He’d figure out a way to explain it to her. He had to. Whatever this was between them, he needed it – needed her – in his life.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I went back in time a little bit.”

The server arrived at their table and they placed their orders and had their drinks refreshed. When he departed, Katniss asked Peeta about the restaurant.

“Ryan and I built it onto the bakery about five years ago,” he explained. “It all started simply enough. After we bought Mother out of the bakery seven years ago, I started making gourmet sandwiches on artisan bread baked right in the bakery. We couldn’t keep them in the case, so I made even more of them and we bought a Panini press. That went so well, I started to make soup.”

“Bet Sae loved that,” Katniss remarked dryly, thinking of a restaurant not far from the bakery that was run by an old woman who lived on Katniss’s street growing up. It was aptly named Greasy Sae’s Diner.

Peeta smirked. “Sae’s clientele aren’t really all that interested in buttercup squash and apple bisque.”

Katniss laughed. “No I suppose they’re not.”

Panem’s response to Peeta’s experiment with the sandwiches and soups had been beyond anything he could have imagined. When summer came, he set up a barbecue and some tables on the sidewalk in front of the bakery where he grilled chicken and cedar-planked salmon to order, slicing it into hot salads while he chatted and joked with the customers. Mellark’s soon became the place people stopped for their coffee and muffin on their way to work and then lingered over lunch with their friends.

When their regulars begged for choices beyond salads, sandwiches and soup, Peeta and Ryan began sizing up their options. Mellark’s already had a reputation for high-quality, fresh food prepared on site. The brothers refused to compromise that by preparing dishes off-site and reheating it at the bakery and the idea of a Mellark serving a customer anywhere in Panem but from the building that had been in their family for generations had been unthinkable.

“Ry and I have a rule. The restaurant has to pay for itself. It can’t ever compromise the bakery, so I started catering dinners in people’s homes to pay for the expansion, plus neither of us took a salary for the two years it took us to save up.”

Katniss was impressed. She couldn’t imagine working for free. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

“It wasn’t, but it was worth it. We’ve got the busiest restaurant in town and it was good for the bakery too. The more people we bring through the door, the more baked goods we move off the shelves, plus all of the bread and desserts we serve in the restaurant are prepared in-house and sold at cost to the restaurant.”

The waiter brought their meals, chicken enmoladas for Katniss and tampiquana steak for Peeta. When she left, Peeta held up his bottle and tipped it in her direction. “A toast.” She looked at him nervously, but held up her bottle just the same. “To messed up reservations.”

He watched the corners of her lips tilt up and she clinked her bottle against his. “I’ll drink to that,” she said, taking a long drink before holding her bottle up again. “To dune buggies and zip lines.”

Peeta saluted her before taking a long pull of his bottle. He settled back in his chair for a moment and considered her. She was glowing tonight, the light of the candle between them reflected in her pupils as she rested her elbow on the table, an aura of relaxed contentment about her that he’d never seen before. A long-dormant circuit flickered to life in his heart, returning a piece of himself that he’d thought was gone forever. He leaned across the table on his elbows and held his bottle up again. “To finding a way back, no matter how lost you get along the road.”

Peeta held his breath, watching as Katniss chewed thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek before picking her bottle back up. She rolled it in her fingers before smiling softly and tapping her bottle against his own. He could barely hear her whispered reply as she brought the long neck to her lips. “Always.”

Her lips were still slightly pursed and damp from the beer when she lowered the bottle. Peeta could still recall how they tasted and ached to feel them pressed to his own again. He’d dreamed of those lips long after he should have put those memories aside. He’d awoken in the dark, longing for grey eyes and olive skin, when another woman was sleeping in his bed with his ring on her finger.

Her tongue flicked over her lips and she cleared her throat. “We should probably eat this before it gets cold,” she said.

His gaze flicked from her mouth to her eyes, which were dancing with amusement. He felt like the boy he’d been in high school, caught staring at her from the other side of the classroom, but he resisted the urge to look away. He gave her a sheepish smile and picked up his steak knife. They dug into their meals, washing the spicy heat away with more beer and sharing bites from each other’s plates while Peeta speculated on the ingredients.

A trumpet blast followed by forceful strums on a Spanish guitar, heralded the entrance of a mariachi band. Their bold, black sombreros and red sashes offered stark contrast to the muted colours of the restaurant. The bows on their violins flashed while the singer’s vocals soared over the intricate music, singing what Peeta supposed was a song laden with love and betrayal. The crowd applauded and then the music softened as the band split up, moving between the tables, but still playing in unison.

“That’s really hard to do, you know,” Katniss observed. “They must be really good musicians to be able to split up and still sound together.

“You sound like you’ve got some experience with it.”

She shrugged. “I joined a band not long after you and I … were together.”

Peeta couldn’t hide his surprise. He knew she could sing, but she didn’t seem like the type to join a band. “I bet you were great.”

They’d sold out every venue on campus. “Not bad. The Mockingjays. I sang lead. I can’t believe you didn’t hear about us. We played just about every weekend until we gave it up at the end of the school year when Chaff and Gloss graduated.”

“I’d probably moved home by then,” he said, using his fork to toy with the bit of rice left on his plate. He could feel her watching him and sensed the question she was waiting to ask. He wiped his mouth on his napkin and looked up at her. “Do you feel like a walk on the beach?”

She nodded and tossed her napkin in her plate as they stood up. He reached out his hand and she laced her fingers in his as they walked through the archway and onto the stone terrace. A torch-lit path led down a series of steps and onto the beach. The music faded into the background. Peeta toed off his shoes and rolled up his pant legs, watching as Katniss bent down to undo the buckles on the ankle straps of the delicate sandals she’d worn to dinner. When she rose with her shoes in her hand, Peeta offered her his arm and she slipped her own through it before they stepped down into the white sand. They slowly strolled toward the waves. Peeta waited for her to ask her question, but she didn’t. Instead, she laid her head against his shoulder with a soft sigh. The water lapped at their toes and swirled around their ankles.

For the second time that night, Peeta was struck by the sense that something precious had been returned to him. It gave him the strength to tell her.

“About three days after the party, I got a phone call from my brother, Brandon. My dad was in the hospital. He’d suffered a major heart attack at the bakery that morning and they didn’t know how long he was going to last.” Katniss inhaled quickly and lifted her head to look at him. She knew, better than anyone, what it meant to lose a father. He kept his eyes on the sea, knowing that if he looked into her compassion-filled face, he’d lose his grip on his control. “I threw some clothes in a bag and jumped on the first bus home. Dad only lasted for a couple of hours after I got there. He’d already said his good-byes to everyone else. He told me that he loved me.” Peeta swallowed, remembering how his father had told him to be true to himself, to do what made him happy and not to settle for less. “Then he closed his eyes and just drifted off.”

Katniss wrapped her arms around his waist and pillowed her head on his chest in silent comfort. He brought his arms about her, resting his cheek on her hair and breathing in the heady fragrance of the orchid he’d tucked behind her ear. “I wish you had called me.” Her voice was tight with emotion. “You should have called me and told me. I’d have wanted to be there for you, Peeta, even if all you wanted was a friend.”

His hand stroked up and down her back. “I thought about it, Katniss. So much. But Mother insisted I pull out of school and help in the bakery.”

She pulled away and looked at him shrewdly. “She blamed you didn’t she? For not staying home like she wanted you to.”

Peeta closed his eyes and remembered her bitter accusations. “It didn’t matter. My family needed me. Brandon and Ryan aren’t as good at the cakes as me and they needed at least one more set of hands. I never went back. Finnick shipped my stuff home for me.”

“You still should have called.”

She wasn’t talking about his father now, he realized. His fingers ran through his hair and paced a few steps away from her. “I wanted to. I wanted to text you the minute you were out the door. I didn’t even want you to go out that door without me, but you said something when you left and I wasn’t sure how to ask you about it. I agonized about it for days. I’d pick up the phone and then put it down. I’d type out a message and then delete it. I was holding my phone in my hand to dial you for the millionth time when the call came from Brandon. After that, it didn’t seem to matter anymore because you clearly weren’t ever going home again and I’d just been handed a life-sentence at the bakery.”

She followed him down the moonlit beach. A light breeze moved through her hair and ruffled her skirt. She stopped in front of him, her hands at her sides. “What did I say? I need to know. I’ve wondered for years what happened. I gave you my number. I told you to call me. I waited by the phone for a week before I finally accepted that it was just a one-night thing for you.”

“It wasn’t. I swear, Katniss, it wasn’t that. I woke up that morning with you in my arms and it felt real, you know? Like you were it for me. I knew that anyway, but I thought maybe you finally felt the same way. Then you were jumping out of bed and swearing and throwing on your clothes, muttering about Jo being pissed at you. You wouldn’t let me take you home. It freaked me out.”

He watched as she put the pieces together. “Wait a minute, you thought Jo and I? Peeta!” She shoved him toward the water before advancing on him again, their shoes dropping onto the wet sand. “Not you too!” She pushed him again. “Do you know how many guys have dated one or the other of us and figured they were getting a two-for-one deal?”

Peeta was in the water up to his knees now and the hem of Katniss’s skirt floated in the water. He put his hands up in self-defence. “Katniss, I didn’t know that Jo was your roommate. You never told me her name. I was afraid there was another guy in your life. A guy named J-O-E. And before you kill me, please remember that I was a stupid, insecure kid who was completely, irreversibly in love with you. I would have called, I swear it. Then Dad died and by the time I could deal emotionally with whatever you might tell me, a couple of months had passed and I figured it was just too late. I’d lost you.”

He felt helpless under her gaze, knowing that whatever she said next could change their lives.

“You’re a real jerk, Mellark,” she said matter-of-factly.

It was over. He’d lost his very last chance with her. His hands fell to his sides and he looked down as the waves flowed around them to the shore. “I’m sorry, Katniss.” Even to Peeta, his voice sound flat and defeated.

“You could have called me six months later and I’d have forgiven you.” He looked up to see her moving toward him again. “You could have called me two years later. I would have been as mad as hell, but still met you for coffee to talk about it. If you’d called me seven years later, I would have made you beg – but I’d have agreed to try again.”

She stopped only inches away and placed her hands on his shoulders. His heart threatened to pound right of his chest, but that didn’t stop him from putting his hands on her hips while he watched her face.

“What about nine years and one broken engagement later? Could you still forgive me then?”

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Say that part about being a kid again.”

“I was a stupid, insecure kid, Katniss. I’m so sorry. I just felt so, you know, wounded.”

“Not that part, Peeta, the other part.” She wasn’t looking him in the eye. Instead, she focused on her thumb stroking his cheek.

He thought for a moment. “Oh,” he said nervously, clearing his throat. He hadn’t been thinking when that slipped out. “You mean the part about being completely, irreversibly in love with you?”

She bit her lip and nodded before finally meeting his gaze. “How completely? How irreversibly?”

“Hopelessly. Permanently.”

“What about the engagement?”

“Broken for a reason, Katniss.” He pulled her tight against him, one hand slipping along her bare back and into her hair. His lips hovered over hers and he breathed her in. “Tell you about it tomorrow?” She barely had a chance to nod before he crashed her lips against his own, desperate to show her how much he had missed her. Finally, he thought, as they clung to each other in the surf. Finally, his heart sang, as her hands fisted in his hair. No more misunderstandings. No more ‘what if’. She sucked his lower lip between her own and then left a trail of kisses along his jaw before returning to his mouth. He heard a moan rumble from his chest and she shivered. He pulled back and looked at her carefully. “Are you cold? I’ll walk you back to you room.”

They slogged out of the water, hand-in-hand, and picked up their soggy shoes from the sand where the water sloshed around them.

“Peeta, you’re completely soaked. You can’t walk me back to my room on the other side of the resort and then back over here dripping wet. I can get back on my own.”

He shook his head. “No. Not after dark. I’m sure you’d be safe, but I wouldn’t feel right about it. Come back with me to my suite and I’ll change into something dry before I walk you back.”

They headed toward the elaborate beachfront suites. With Katniss tucked under his arm, Peeta’s heart felt lighter than it had in years. He stopped suddenly and wrapped both arms around her again. “You’re perfect for me, you know that?”

Katniss rose up on her tiptoes to kiss him. “No one has ever made me feel the way I do when I’m with you. No one in all this time has even come close. I need you to know that. But you hurt me when you didn’t call and I’m disappointed that you doubted me. I need you to know that too.”

“I’m sorry, Katniss. So unbelievably sorry.” He touched his forehead to hers.

“It was a long time ago, Peeta. We both made mistakes. I’m sorry that I rushed off that morning. But most of all, I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you when your father died. I wish I’d known about that. I would have been there, even if all you needed from me was friendship.”

He chuckled and kissed her forehead. “I don’t think I could ever just be your friend, Katniss.”

They started off toward his suite again and before long arrived outside his door and he ushered her inside. “I’ll just be a second,” he called as galloped up the stairs.

“Peeta! This place is huge!” Katniss’s voice drifted up to him.

“I know. It’s ridiculous.” He stripped off his shirt and threw it on the floor before moving to closet and pulling the door open.

“Have you got an extra shirt?”

He moved to the wrought iron rail at the edge of the loft. “I knew you were cold,” he called down to her. “Just a second, I’ll find something.” He turned to go back to his closet.

“No, wait. That’s not what I mean.” He looked back down her and noticed she was twisting her fingers into knots. He raised an eyebrow and waited.

“I was just thinking, this place is enormous and you’ve got this big couch. Well, I could just sleep down here tonight, if you had an extra shirt, that is.”

Peeta’s gripped the rail so tightly his knuckles were white. His mind raced at the idea of her spending the night in his suite. “Yeah,” he rasped. “I’ve got something. Come on up.”

He was pulling a shirt out of the drawer when she arrived at the top of the stairs. “Here. The bathroom is through there if you want to put it on.” While she was changing, he quickly stripped off his wet pants and traded them for a pair of thin pyjama bottoms and then stepped out onto the balcony, hoping the night air would clear his head and help him settle down. He breathed in the salt air and tried desperately to think of anything but the way her body had felt twined around his the last time they’d been in his bedroom.

“It’s such a nice night.” He turned around to discover that Katniss Everdeen in nothing but his button-down was possibly the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. She’d braided her hair again and it fell over her shoulder which was nearly falling out of the neck of the shirt. She padded across the tile toward him and then wrapped her arms around his waist.

He felt her stifle a yawn and smiled. “I was going to offer you a drink, but you’re tired.”

“Mmm. I didn’t sleep well last night and we had a big day today.”

He chuckled. “That we did. A big, big, big day.”

“I feel like I’ve lived two lifetimes since that fight on the beach this morning.”

He pressed his lips into her hair. “Tell you what. You take the bed and I’ll sleep on the couch.” He led her inside and pulled back the covers. “Get in.”

“No. I’m not putting you out of your bed, Peeta.”

“Katniss, I’ll be fine down on the couch for one night.”

Katniss heaved a dramatic sigh and flicked off the bedside lamp before climbing into the bed. Peeta started to drop the blanket, but she stopped him. “Stay with me?”

“Sure, of course. If that’s OK with you.” He slid in beside her and she curled up with her head on his chest, one arm slung across his waist. He felt her drift off to sleep in his arms almost immediately.

“Always,” he whispered into the night.


	8. As Real as it Gets

The sheer curtains in the patio door of were billowing in the morning breeze when Katniss awoke in Peeta’s arms. She watched them fill like gossamer balloons before fluttering up to release their contents and whispering back across the floor toward the balcony just outside the bedroom of Peeta’s luxurious suite. They seemed to be floating in and out of the room in time with the waves rolling onto the beach and the flow of Peeta’s soft, even breathing across her neck. The simple rhythm added to the unfamiliar sense of peace that had stolen over her the minute that Peeta had slipped in beside her the night before.

They had rolled to their sides in unison as they slept. He was spooned against her back, his arm holding her tightly as though he were subconsciously afraid that she’d slip away. But she wasn’t going anywhere.

Katniss didn’t know when, but somewhere along the way her heart had been tied to Peeta Mellark’s and they’d never been able to untangle the strings. She wasn’t sure she’d ever really wanted to. Peeta, on the other hand, had been engaged. Katniss didn’t blame him for having a relationship. She didn’t. She had dated, even had boyfriends who lasted a few weeks or months, but there had been no declarations of love or talk of commitment. Katniss hadn’t wanted that or needed it. She claimed to be too busy with Prim to deal with romance. The truth was that she refused to settle for less than what she’d felt with Peeta, even while she pretended to forget him.

Is that what he’d done? It was the only way she could reconcile words his words last night with the idea that he’d been engaged. She’d never forget them for as long as she lived. Completely. Irreversibly. Hopelessly. Permanently. In love with her. And it was possible that she felt the same.

Behind her, Peeta took a deep breath and stretched before nuzzling his nose into her neck inside the collar of the shirt she was wearing. He placed a kiss where it connected with her shoulder and then made his way up the slender column toward her ear. “Good morning,” he whispered sleepily before moving his lips to her cheek where he kissed her softly again, his hand skimming up her body, coming to rest just below her breast.

Katniss reached behind her and sank her fingers into his hair, pressing his cheek to her own and ignoring the way the stubble on his jaw scratched her face. “Mmm. Hi.” She snuggled deeper into his bare chest. She laced her fingers through his and they both relaxed into the mattress while the breeze blew over them. They lay quietly, as though hypnotized by the sound of the waves while the gulls cried out to each other.

“This is nice.”

It was better than nice, Katniss thought. She couldn’t remember another moment in her life when she’d felt so content. “It is,” she replied.

She could feel him smiling as he kissed her neck again. Succumbing to the urge to look at him, she rolled over. His hair was tousled. His eyes were soft from sleep and full of dreams. Two days in the sun had given his skin a golden sheen. She reached out to stroke his cheek again and the smile on his lips spoke of promises they had yet to make. The pad of her thumb passed lightly across his lips and he drew it into his mouth, nipping it lightly before releasing it with a playful grin. His hand slipped under the shirt, skimming up so that it bunched at her waist before sliding back down over her panties to her thigh. She watched him, wordlessly, as he repeated the motion and then swung her leg over his hip. Heat pooled at her centre when she felt him hard against her. Peeta clearly wasn’t as drowsy as he seemed. He used his weight to gently push her back against the bed so that he hovered above her, one leg between her thighs.

“What are your plans for the day?” He flicked open a button on the shirt and lowered his head to explore the soft plain of exposed skin with his lips.

“Uh…” How was she supposed to think while he did that? “Not much. Find a sunbed on the beach and read for a while maybe?”

He flicked open another button, exposing the valley of her breasts and his mouth trailed downward. “You could do that here, if you like. I have a private one out on the patio.” His hands found her breasts, stroking the peaks through the fabric of the shirt with his thumb.

She whimpered and sank her hands back into his hair, urging him upward so that she could kiss him. Their lips met and clung together in a languorous embrace. As they pulled apart, she bit his lower lip lightly and then her lips travelled along his jaw to his ear. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I need to go back to my room and get cleaned up.”

“Do that here. Wait until you try my shower. You’ll never want to leave it.” The shirt was fully unbuttoned now and his lips replaced his hands.

She gasped as his tongue swirled around one nipple, teasing it into a taut pebble before drawing it into his mouth. Why did she want to go back to her room again? “My toothbrush,” she managed.

He lifted his head. “I’m pretty sure I have a spare.” He replaced his lips with his fingers and then turned his attention to the other breast.

She licked her lips and attempted to catch her breath. Damn. He was good at this, but she couldn’t hang around here all day. She needed clean clothes. “My book and…” His teeth grazed her nipple and she whimpered in pleasure as her train of thought was derailed again. She wove her fingers into his hair. What had she been trying to tell him? Right. “Stuff. I’ve got to, I mean I need my, oh!” His hand rode up the inside of her thigh brushing lightly over her underwear.

He lifted his head and gazed down upon her determinedly. He laid his finger across her lips. “We’ll go get it. Later.” He rose above her, repositioning himself between her legs, and laid a trail of open-mouthed kisses down her sternum, over her belly to the edge of her panties. His hands slid back up the inside of her thighs and he stroked her again. Her neck arched back against the pillows while her hips rose from the bed against the gentle pressure of his fingers.

She shuddered with want and closed her eyes. “But…”

“Katniss.” His finger slipped inside her panties. She gasped again. “I’ll stop if you want me to.” He ran his fingers over her swollen flesh. “Look at me.” She opened her eyes to meet his. They were darker than usual, like a storm-filled sea. ”Is that what you want? To stop?” His thumb slipped between her folds and brushed against her bundle of nerves.

A small sound sprang from her throat when he made contact. “No! Don’t stop.”

His thumb moved in a small circle and her hips rose up to meet his hand again. “You sure?” When she nodded, Peeta hooked her panties in his fingers and whipped them off, letting them fall to the floor. “OK then. Turn off that busy brain of yours and let me touch you.” His thumb returned to her folds to stroke her. Her legs fell open. He lowered his head and looked at her hungrily. “Let me taste you.”

Katniss felt like she was on fire from within, a slow burning that began where his tongue met her centre and spread through her limbs to the tips of her fingers and toes. He dipped it inside her, groaning softly and then slid upward, his tongue rolling between her folds, over her clit before sliding down again. Katniss’ breath grew shallow as her entire being focused on Peeta’s ministrations and the liquid heat that flowed through her. One of his strong hands clamped over her thigh to hold her in place as he used the other to slide two fingers inside her, pumping slowly when she tightened around them. His mouth moved to the insides of her thighs as she squirmed trying to bare down against his hand or bring his mouth back down upon her.

“Uh-uh,” he chastised. “I’ve waited a long time to do this.” He moved then, to cover her body with his own while she cradled him between her legs. He captured her hand when she tried to slip it inside his pyjama pants. He pinned it above her head and brought his lips to hers. “This,” he said firmly before kissing her again and then leaning down to trace his tongue along the shell of her ear. “This is a favourite fantasy of mine,” he whispered in her ear and ground his hard length against her. Katniss wrapped her legs around his and pulled him in closer wanting as much of him as he would give her and far more than he was sharing at the moment. He grazed his teeth lightly against her neck and pressed himself against her again. She whimpered. “I dream of you. All the time.” His breath was hot against her neck and his voice had taken on a husky tone. “Hot. Needy. Hungry.” A jolt of anticipation ran down her spine as he returned to her mouth only to stop a hair’s breath away. “So Don’t.” He pressed his lips against hers. “Rush.” He kissed her again. “Me.” This time, Peeta’s tongue slipped across the seam of her mouth begging entry and she admitted him, her tangy taste still on his tongue as it slid across her own. He let go of her wrist so that she could pull him in closer to her as their lips and tongues entwined.

As their lips moved together, their hips found a rhythm, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy either of them.

Katniss tore her mouth away from his. “Peeta, please,” she begged. He made a noise somewhere between a growl and a purr of satisfaction. He kissed her lips, her chin. His mouth made a stop between her breasts where he rolled the sensitive tips between his fingers. His tongue trailed down her belly, around her navel. And this time, when he lowered his mouth between her legs he focused his attention on the part of her that ached the most.

Katniss cried out, arching up off the bed. He brought his fingers back inside her, pumping in and out vigorously. Her hands were in his hair again holding him in place.

“Don’t stop. I’m almost there.” She was lost to everything but how he was making her feel – powerful, sexy, free. She raced down a tunnel of need, straining toward the white light that was flashing behind her eyelids.

He crooked his fingers in a come-hither gesture and soon her body exploded into a thousand points of delicious energy and she called out his name like an answered prayer.

Her body was still pulsing when she opened her eyes to see satisfaction glittering in his own. She sat up and pulled him against her hungrily. “Now,” she said. “I need you inside me now.”

He gave her a crooked grin and started to lay her back against the bed when she remembered. “Wait. Please tell me you have something.”

His eyes widened when he realized what they’d been about to do. “Uh. I think so. Maybe. Just a sec.” He raced into the adjoining bathroom and she could hear him frantically looking for a condom. She sat up, biting her knuckle in an effort not to giggle. She lost the battle when he returned, foil packet in hand.

“That’s not nice,” he said, shaking his head as he crawled up on the bed. “You shouldn’t laugh at a desperate man.”

She took the packet from him, wrapping her arms around his waist and hooking the waistband of his pyjamas under her thumbs. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess I’ll have to make it up to you.” In one smooth motion, Katniss undressed him, revelling in Peeta’s hiss when her hand wrapped around his erection. She stroked him firmly, circling her thumb over the head before making a return journey to the base. Peeta’s eyes closed and his chest heaved jerkily at the contact. His expression, slack with pleasure at her first touch, was becoming increasingly focused and his jaw was tense. He called out her name to the ceiling in pleasure and surprise when her lips wrapped around him. She hummed back in response and then rolled her tongue over his shaft. She began to bob her head up and down, taking more of him into her mouth each time, answering his groans of pleasure with moans of her own. She picked up speed, sucking harder, and reached out to fondle him when he stopped her.

Peeta took the packet from her, sheathed himself quickly and then rubbed his knuckles against her cheek. He seemed shy, uncertain. “Shall we?”

She looked up into those blue eyes, the ones that belonged to the man she’d never been able to forget, and thought about how, only just days ago, she believed he had used her for a one-night stand. Now everything was different. They wouldn’t repeat history. They would find a way to make it work. She hoped.

Their hands found each other without further discussion. The lazy exploration that had kindled frantic passion was forgotten. This was not a prom night flirtation with romance or a college hook-up.

This was real. As real as it gets.

Peeta joined them together and they moved as one being, the pace of their bodies in time with the beat of their hearts. Katniss wrapped herself around him, her entire world shrinking until there was nothing left but her and Peeta, locked in the most intimate of all embraces. His hands danced over her body, kindling heat and pleasure. His voice whispered in her ear, telling her she was beautiful, perfect. Unable to find words, she worshipped him with her body. When they reached their peak, his eyes were filled a love that burned into her soul, returning a piece of her that she hadn’t known was missing. She realized in that moment that the years they’d been apart didn’t matter. This would have happened anyway.

After, she lay curled against his chest, his lips pressed to her forehead while he stroked her back.

“I love you.” There was a tremble in his whispered words, as though he feared they might not be returned. “I’ve always loved you.”

He needn’t have worried. “I love you too,” she said simply and clearly before reaching up to place her lips against his own. “Always.”

A whoosh of air expelled from his body as he crushed her to him, peppering her face with kisses as he said those three all-important words over and over. She laughed and attempted to wriggle away, starting a wrestling match that only ended when, perched above him and contemplating a series of rather sexy options, Katniss’ stomach growled.

Peeta gave her a crooked grin. “Breakfast time?” She scowled and he laughed. “What?” She shook her head. Breakfast meant leaving, which she no longer wanted to do in spite of her earlier protests about returning to her room. “C’mon, Katniss,” he cajoled, tickling her sides, “what put that look on your face?”

“I just want to stay here,” she muttered, which made him laugh harder, before sitting up and flipping her over to her back where they bounced against the mattress.

“Then stay,” he said, kissing her quickly. “Stay here. With me, for the rest of the week.” She started to protest. “No, really. I got a free breakfast in bed with this crazy honeymoon package. I’ll call right now and order it. After breakfast you and I will conserve water by sharing the world’s biggest shower and then we’ll go get your stuff. We’ve only got a couple of days left here. I want to spend every second of it with you.”

Katniss bit her lip. Then she nodded. Peeta’s eyes danced. “You’ll allow it?”

“Yes, I’ll allow it.”

* * *

 

They had a breakfast feast at a little iron bistro set on the balcony. Katniss’s omelette oozed with spicy habanero cheese when she cut into it and dipped it into the salsa it was served with. The bread basket was filled with toast, croissant and little oval shaped rolls called bolillos that Peeta, ever the baker, told her were served at breakfast time in Mexican homes. The roll was still warm when she slathered it with butter before reaching for some fresh fruit.

She chewed the crispy roll thoughtfully, watching as a crowd began to gather on the beach below them.

“So,” she said, turning her attention back to him. Peeta was pouring himself a cup of tea. “Sounds like you paid for the deluxe honeymoon package.”

He rolled his eyes. “A deluxe, non-refundable honeymoon package. Not my idea. I worked double shifts over the winter to pay for this.” He shook his head.

“Peeta! Really?” Katniss was shocked that any woman would be ok with that kind of sacrifice from someone she loved for the sake a vacation, honeymoon or not.

“Yeah.” He sipped his tea, put it down. “There was no way I was going to let it go to waste after everything fell apart. I just figured I’d stay drunk for the whole trip, skip the couple-y things. Then there you were. And now, here _we_ are. So, hey, not complaining.” He reached for a bolillo, pulled it apart and reached for the butter.

“So what else is in this package of yours?”

His brow wrinkled as he buttered his roll and tried to remember. “A day-long visit to the spa for two.” Katniss shuddered. “What?”

“Strangers touching me. Gross.”

His eyes narrowed he pointed at her with his bread knife. “I knew you were lying to me the other morning.” She blushed and stabbed a piece of melon with her fork. “Anyway, there are some other things too. Another excursion. A special dinner.”

Katniss swallowed the melon. “Nice.” She toyed with her omelette with her fork, unable to look at him. “So what happened?”

“Delly called it off.”

Katniss dropped her fork, breakfast forgotten. Her eyes flew to Peeta who was sipping his tea and looking out over the water. “Oh. My God. You didn’t just say you were engaged to Delly Cartright.” His eyes snapped to hers and the look on his face was a mixture of insult and surprise.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Perky, annoying, Delly Cartright? The girl responsible for the biggest PDA in the history of our graduating class?”

“Delly’s a good person, Katniss.”

“Peeta!” She plucked a grape from the bowl of fruit between them and threw it at him. He ducked just in time.

“Hey!”

“A good person? She dumped you at prom for another guy! Did you learn nothing from that?”

He pursed his lips. “First of all, Katniss, Delly has been my friend my entire life and she was a very good friend to me through a rough time after my dad died. Second, Delly didn’t dump me at prom. It was embarrassing, but I got over it. She and I went as friends. I wanted to be there with you. She knew that. I thought you knew that.”

She hadn’t. Not really. She’d hoped she was the girl he’d talked about that night, but hadn’t allowed herself to believe it. But this wasn’t about them.

“Peeta, she expected you to work double shifts to pay for this trip and then called the wedding off? That is so selfish. I just don’t understand how you can sit here and say she’s a good person?” Katniss was outraged for him. Peeta was the good person, the one who forgave people when they didn’t really deserve it. How could she have put him through that?

He grinned at her. “You’re jealous.”

Was she? Maybe. No. “That’s not the point,” she protested.

His smile got wider. “It is to me.” He chuckled to himself. “Katniss Everdeen is jealous over me.”

“I’m not. I’m mad and I don’t understand how you could work double shifts all winter just to satisfy her wish for this big trip and not be angry too.”

“It wasn’t like that. C’mere.” He took her hand and pulled her around the table to his lap. He stroked her outer thigh under the shirt and buried his face in her neck.

“I love you in my shirt,” he muttered. “It’s the sexiest damn thing I’ve ever seen.” His lips nipped at her collarbone and he settled his chin on her shoulder. “The restaurant is doing really well, Katniss. I could have afforded the trip without the double shifts, but I didn’t want to do it that way. I’ve been saving up for the seed money for another restaurant for the last couple of years. I’ve got a good nest egg built up, but not quite enough yet. Delly wanted me to use the money for a down payment on a house and our honeymoon. I was willing to give her those things, but I didn’t want to give up on my restaurant dream to do it. I told her we’d be fine in the apartment for a while and Rye and I decided that I would take on the extra shifts we usually have over Christmas to save for this trip rather than hiring staff.”

Katniss played with his hair while he spoke. It was better that he couldn’t see her. It was killing her to listen to him talk about living with another woman.

“Anyway, after Christmas, I didn’t stop working. I’m really close to my goal for the restaurant. She wasn’t seeing me much. She was planning the wedding and she was mad that I wasn’t more interested. I told her whatever she wanted was fine with me, but I’d take care of the cake and the food. Anyway, about six weeks ago she came into the office at the restaurant and told me she wanted me to cut back on my hours. I said no. She said that she didn’t see me anymore and it was only going to get worse if there was another restaurant and she really didn’t understand why Rye and I would want to compete with ourselves by opening another restaurant anyway. So I told her.”

“Told her what?”

Peeta toyed with the buttons on her shirt. “That it wasn’t Rye’s restaurant too. That it was still going to be Mellark’s, but it was going to be mine. And it was going to be in Pittsburgh.”

Her hands stilled in his hair. Her heart began to race as she imagined her reaction to passing an awning with his name on it over the entrance to a romantic cafe. Delly probably had the same thought, she realized. “You never told her you plans? How did she react to that?”

He made a face. “Not well. She got very squeaky, accused me of keeping secrets.”

She hated taking Delly’s side. “You kind of did.”

He shrugged. “Not on purpose. I hadn’t really thought about where it was going to be or why I was saving so much. Not consciously anyway. It just, sort of, came together all at once in the heat of the moment. Anyway, she said that she had no interest in living in the city or in spending even more of her evenings waiting for me in the apartment while I worked myself to the bone, especially if I was planning on dragging myself between Panem and the city several times a week. Then she said that if I thought that she was going to waste her life sitting around in Panem while I spent my time in Pittsburgh waiting for you to walk into my restaurant...”

Katniss froze and inhaled quickly on a hiss. Peeta laced his fingers through hers and brought them to his lips.

“Is that true? Is this my fault?”

“No.” He used their entwined fingers to wrap their arms around her. “None of what happened between Delly and me is your fault. None of it.” He kissed her neck. “We should have talked more about what we wanted from our lives. She teaches school and wants a very traditional marriage with someone who keeps regular hours. Even without the new restaurant, I was never going to be able to give her that.”

“Do you love her?” She hated herself for asking, for the needy tone in her voice.

“Not like this,” he said, squeezing her tightly. “Not the way she deserves. It made sense for us to be married. We’re a lot alike. We’re good friends. Well, we were, anyway. I’m not sure what we are anymore. Our families wanted to see it happen. It just seemed to be what everyone expected of us.”

Katniss bit her lip. “What about the restaurant, what she said about me?”

Peeta sighed and snuggled her neck some more. “She’s always known about my feelings for you. Hell, you’re the only person we went to school with who didn’t.” Katniss’s eyes became moon-shaped as she processed that bit of information. She could feel him smiling against her shoulder and she swung around so that they faced each other. His hands found her waist while she wound her arms around his neck. “I won’t tell you that I’ve never imagined you walking into my classy little bistro someday and being very impressed, but that isn’t why I want a restaurant in Pittsburgh.”

She remembered how carefree he’d been the night of Finnick’s party. “You were happy there.”

He nodded. “I didn’t have my mother breathing down my neck. I wasn’t the baker’s son. I was just Peeta. I was an artist and a chef-in-training. Then Dad died and I had to go home. It feels, unfinished, you know?”

She pecked him on the lips. “I get it,” she said, and she did. “But what would have happened if I walked in to married Peeta’s restaurant?”

He buried his hands in her hair and brought their faces together. Her cheeks were cupped in the palms of his hands as their brows touched. He kissed her forehead while he spoke into her hair. “Maybe you will someday.”


	9. FaceTime Confessions

Katniss used her swipe card to open the door to her room. Peeta held the door to allow her to enter before following her in. She swiftly pulled a clean pair of khaki shorts and a soft tank from a drawer, along with some clean underclothes before ducking into the bathroom to change while Peeta wandered the room.

“This is more than decent,” he commented, his voice carrying into the bathroom. “Hey, it’s a swim-up and you’ve got a nice little patio. Two beds?”

“One was for Jo,” she said when she re-entered the bedroom.

“I wondered why you were here alone too. Jo was supposed to be here? What happened?”

Katniss snatched up her toiletry case from the dresser and returned to the bathroom to brush out her hair and rebraid it. “A man,” she said simply.

“Really? She couldn’t handle a week away from her boyfriend?”

Katniss poked her head out the bathroom door. “Could you please grab my suitcase out of the closet?” When Peeta nodded and headed for the closet door, she tucked her head back into the bathroom to apply sunscreen to her face and explained. “A couple of weeks ago, she bailed out of this trip because of some guy she didn’t want to let out of her sight. It was very weird. I’ve known Jo for 10 years and this is the first time I’ve ever known her to be even slightly serious about a guy. Jo doesn’t do boyfriends. Sex always been a no-strings-attached, let’s-just-have-fun kind of thing for her. Friends-with-benefits is a committed relationship to Jo.”

She was swiping lip balm onto her lips when Peeta appeared in the doorway, He leaned on the doorjamb and smirked at her in the mirror. “I’m guessing the big box of condoms in your suitcase is her doing.”

Katniss swept her toiletries into the case to take them back to his suite with her. She grinned as she passed him on the way back to the bedroom. “I told you I had it covered.”

He slipped his arms around her and kissed the back of her neck. She could feel him smiling. “That’s what she said.”

Katniss groaned and wriggled away, tossing the toiletry bag into her suitcase next to the pack of condoms which Jo had, in fact, slipped in there just before Katniss had checked her luggage. _Try to crack the box open at least once, Brainless._ Ha. Maybe she’d bring it back empty. She guessed that Peeta would be up to the challenge. She starting unpacking the dresser drawers. “I still can’t believe a single man came all the way to Mexico and only brought one condom.”

Peeta dropped down onto Jo’s bed, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “I didn’t come down here for that. I just happened to have one in my bag. I haven’t worried about condoms for a long time. Delly was on the pill, so…” He shrugged.

An image of Delly’s voluptuous body wrapped around Peeta’s flashed through Katniss’s mind. She clutched the pile of clothing in her hands reflexively and then ruthlessly pushed the thought aside. They each had a past. There was no taking it back. No point in regretting the time they’d lost. She finished stuffing her shorts and tees into the suitcase and crossed to the closet. It opened with a bang. She could feel his curious eyes on her back when she reached up to take her sundresses down from the closet.

“You’re upset. What’s wrong? What did I say?”

Katniss shook her head when she turned around, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. “Everything’s fine.” She walked back to the suitcase and started to carefully place the dresses in the bag.

Peeta grabbed her elbow and pulled her backwards into his lap. “Hey. What’s this about? Are you mad about Delly?”

“No. And even if I were, I wouldn’t have any right to be. There aren’t many guys in my past, but I’m not a nun.”

She tried to get back up, but he wrapped his arms more tightly around her waist. He rested his chin on her shoulder and ignored her rigid back. “No, you don’t. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She sighed. Why wouldn’t he just let it go? “You mentioned your sex life with Delly. It just kind of flashed before my eyes and I freaked out a bit.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted you to know that I didn’t come down here looking for this.”

She whipped around to look at him. “What do you mean, looking for this?”

Peeta paled a little under his suntan. “That didn’t come out right. I’m just trying to say that this,” he pointed between the two of them, “is special. That I didn’t come down here just looking to hook-up with someone. I’ve never done that. Not even once.” He looked at her pointedly. “This,” he gestured between them again, “would never have happened with anyone but you.” Katniss relaxed in his lap and they were both silent for a moment. “I’ve just been counting my blessings that Delly called the wedding off.”

He’d surprised her again. What did that mean? He must have seen the question in her face. “Katniss, I made Delly a promise and I would have kept it. But seeing you again and bumping into you over and over during this trip would have been pure torture.”

Katniss wrapped her arms around Peeta’s waist and put her head on his shoulder. She spoke her next words into his neck. “I wouldn’t have been able to stay away. From the Pittsburgh restaurant, I mean. I’d have tried, but eventually I would have needed to make a lame excuse and go in.”

“Now you don’t have to.”

“Nope.” She started placing little kisses between his neck and his collarbone. “You’re going to need a couch in your office though.” His hands slipped under her top while she sucked on his pulse point and then laved the spot with her tongue before dragging the tip of it along the column of his neck and nibbling on his ear.

“I hadn’t thought about it. But there will be nights I’ll probably have to stay over, so that makes sense.” His hands found her breasts and flicked her nipples with his thumbs.

She gasped slightly into his ear. “No,” she whispered, swinging around so she straddled his lap, grinding against him. “You’ll stay at my place those nights. The couch is for when you need to take a break. With me. I’m an excellent distraction.”

“We should practice.” He kissed her softly.

“We really should.” She pushed him back on the bed. They spoke no words for a while as their hands explored under their clothes and then removed them. He swallowed her sighs as he slid his hands under her braid and up into her hair.

“Katniss, is that box very far away?”

The sound of her laughter was throaty and deep. “Remind me to buy Jo a thank you gift before we leave.”

* * *

 

An hour later and nestled in the crook of Peeta’s arm, Katniss played with the fine gold hair on his chest. He gave a satisfied stretch. “You’re going to wear me out, Everdeen.” Katniss made a face and sighed. Peeta looked worried. “What now?”

“I’m going to have to admit to Jo that she wasn’t even here and her bed still saw more action than mine.”

Peeta gaped at her and then chortled. “This roommate of yours sounds like quite a woman.”

Katniss grinned at him. “She’s an acquired taste, but as loyal as they come.”

They started to get dressed so that they could finish moving Katniss over to Peeta’s suite. Peeta pulled on his boxers and threw Katniss’s bra at her. “I still don’t get why she was so upset about you staying with me the night of the party.”

Katniss buttoned her shorts and explained about Jo’s rules, which all three women in their household were expected to adhere to without exception. “There are only three. No stupid risk-taking is at the top of the list. Hence the box of condoms.”

Peeta shrugged into his t-shirt. “Seeing as I’m going to directly benefit from that one, I can get behind it. What are the rest?”

“No judging the other roommates’ decisions because no stupid risk-taking was involved. It’s also an important one because the third rule is that you always check in if you’re not coming home so that everyone else knows you’re safe.”

“So that’s why you were in such a hurry that morning?”

Finally dressed, Katniss tossed three pairs of shoes into a tote bag. “Yep. She waited all night to hear from me. I had about 10 more minutes to call her and then she was going to call the police.”

Katniss was lost in thought when she zipped up the bags. She was trying so hard not to dwell in the past, but they’d both made so many mistakes. If only she had allowed Peeta to take her home rather than worrying about setting a bad example for Prim that morning. He would have met Jo. They could have talked more. She could have been there for him while he’d grieved for his dad. Their lives might be so different.

“Hey, your iPad was on the desk.” Peeta gave her a curious look when he passed it to her. She pretended not to notice and lifted the tablet’s cover to check the battery. She saw that her sister had attempted to contact her on FaceTime several times the night before. Worried that something was wrong at home, Katniss checked the clock by the bed. Prim was still at work. She would be in touch again as soon as she got home if it was urgent, Katniss knew.

She tucked the iPad into the tote bag and threw it over her shoulder. Peeta hefted the suitcase off of the bed. He pulled out the handle gave her an encouraging smile. “Together?” He held out his free hand.

“Together.” She laced her fingers through his and led him out the door.

* * *

Katniss hummed low in her throat as Peeta brushed a kiss at the nape of her neck and untied the strings on her bikini top. She was stretched out on her belly, soaking up the warmth of the afternoon sun while he applied sunscreen to her back and shoulders. She’d expected he would simply rub the coconut-scented cream into her skin as she’d done for him, but he’d turned her request into a back massage. Between the heat of the day and the strength of his hands, she was becoming a sleepy puddle of her former self.

“Katniss.” His breath was hot against her ear.

“Hmm?”

“You can’t fall asleep out here, you’ll burn to a crisp.”

“Mmm. Don’t care. Can’t move. Your fault.” She patted the space beside her on the double sunbed on the patio of his – now their -- suite. “Stay with me. Don’t let me fall asleep.”

Peeta settled down beside her and kissed her temple. “Well, one of us needs to stay awake because I’m reasonably certain I’m asleep. This whole trip feels like a dream to me. I’m going to wake up at home in my bed in Panem any minute now.”

Katniss was chuckling and offering to pinch him when the alarm on Katniss’s iPad sounded in the suite. Prim. She struggled to get up but Peeta placed a hand on her back, reminding her that her bikini was still untied. He went into the suite to retrieve it and then settled back down on the sunbed, pulling his straw cowboy hat down over his face.

When Katniss opened FaceTime, her baby sister was staring back at her with a worried look on her face.

“Ohmigod, Katniss! Where have you been? I tried to reach you all night last night and then again this morning. It’s not like you to not call me back. I’ve been so worried that something happened.”

“Everything’s fine, Prim. Everything’s great in fact.”

Katniss listened patiently as Prim bubbled with relief that Katniss was finally having a good time. “I just told Rory last night that I hoped you had put the whole scene with Peeta on Monday behind you and you’d finally begun to enjoy your trip.”

From the corner of her eye, Katniss saw Peeta lift his hat off his face, his eyebrows raising slightly over his wraparounds. Oh God. She’d forgotten to tell him that Prim was not his biggest fan, thanks to Rory and Gale. She had to stop this conversation before it got worse.

“You’re right, Prim. I did put it behind me, but probably not the way you mean. You see…”

At that moment, Peeta’s hands reached over her shoulders to pick up the strings of her bikini and retie it around her neck. In the little window of the right hand corner of her screen, she watched as they trailed over her neck before disappearing out of sight again to tie the other set of strings.

“Katniss!” Prim screeched. “Do you have a man with you? Who is he? Is that Peeta? Is he there with you?”

Katniss looked over. Peeta was doubled over, his arms wrapped around himself as he chortled in silent glee over her little sister’s reaction.

“Katniss, seriously, who was that?” Prim’s voice was insistent.

Katniss rolled her eyes when she saw Peeta lifting his shades to wipe the tears from his own. “I think you better come over here and say hello before my sister slips a gear.”

Peeta lowered his cheek down beside Katniss’s and smiled. His glasses were off and his blue eyes twinkled. “Hi Prim. It’s nice to see you again. Katniss certainly talks a lot about you.” While Prim did her best impression of a fish, Peeta kissed Katniss’s cheek softly. “I’ll go inside. Give you some privacy.”

She smiled at him indulgently as he closed the patio door. When she turned her attention back to the screen, Prim’s jaw was still hanging. “So. That was Peeta.”

“Holy crap, Katniss. I called you to tell you that I was able to find out Peeta Mellark’s wedding was cancelled and he was just messing with you again. But he’s there with you. What the hell is going on?”

Katniss knew that her sister was legitimately concerned for her, but sense that their roles had been somehow reversed left her uneasy. “Peeta and I have worked things out, Prim. I’m staying in his suite with him for the rest of the trip.”

“Katniss! Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, you guys don’t have the world’s greatest track record.”

“Prim.”

“And the rumour back home is that he wasn’t being very good to Delly. She told Leevy Johnson who told me that he was totally uninterested in their wedding.”

“Prim.”

“I’m just concerned about you, Katniss. You’ve always had a blind spot when it comes to that guy.”

Ok that was enough. “Little Duck,” she said firmly, before taking off her sunglasses and stared into the screen. “Stop it. Listen to me. I need you to trust me. We’ve talked about what happened and about Delly. I’m really happy, for the first time in a long time. Please be happy for me.”

Prim gazed at her sister in silence for a minute. She closed her eyes and when she reopened them, her expression was softer, but no less concerned. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” Katniss felt herself blushing as she nodded. “It’s always been him, am I right?”

Katniss looked down and gnawed on her bottom lip. “What can I say? We Everdeen women fall fast and hard and early.”

Prim snickered. “It does seem to be our genetics. I love you, Katniss. You tell Bread Boy that Jo and I will have our eyes on him. If he messes with you, he’ll have us to contend with.”

That was the way of things in their family. Katniss was more than OK with it. “Have you heard from Jo since I left? I know she made plans with that guy, but I haven’t heard anything from her. I’ve been hoping she’s stayed in touch with you.”

“Yep. They were over here for dinner the other night,” Prim said, shocking Katniss.

“What? You met him? What’s his name? What’s he like?”

Prim opened her mouth to answer and then glanced behind her startled. Katniss could hear a faint “Prim!” in the background. Rory stuck his head into the doorway behind her sister. “Prim, have you seen my blue pinstripe shirt? I can’t find it.”

Prim turned back to her sister. “I’ve gotta go, Katniss. Rory and I have to go out for dinner with one of his clients and apparently he can’t find his shirt. I’m glad you’re OK and I’m happy for you. Really, I am. We need a girls’ night with lots of wine and chocolate when you get home, OK?”

“Uh, sure. But Prim, about Jo…”

“She’s fine, Katniss, I promise. She’ll fill in the dots when you get home. I love you. Bye!”

Katniss stared at the space where her sister’s face used to be. Life was definitely changing.


	10. Sail Away With Me

Peeta crossed its deck of the catamaran with a plastic flute of champagne in each hand, his eyes on Katniss who leaned against the rail of the party boat as it motored away from shore. Her chin tilted up and he watched her draw the sea air into her lungs and smile slightly. A few strands of hair had escaped from her braid and were blowing back from her face. He’d bought her a pair of earrings in a resort shop the day before and now they swung in the breeze as they dangled from her ears, perfect pearls nesting inside balls of fine wire made of Mexican silver.

He joined her at the rail, dropping a kiss on the shoulder exposed by the wide neck of the slouchy, jade green sweater she was wearing over her white bikini top. The same bikini had almost brought him to his knees when she’d put it on that afternoon, another purchase from the day before. It set off her toned body and olive skin perfectly. You could see it under the loosely knit sweater, which only served to draw further attention to the swimsuit, and to her. Several men on board were staring, but she was as oblivious to their attention as always. His fingers itched for a pencil. He’d sketched her face hundreds of times over the years. He could draw her a thousand times more and never tire of it. Peeta feared he might need to do just that to survive the distance that would be between them when they returned to their real lives tomorrow.

Katniss frowned when she saw him. “What’s wrong?”

Peeta shook his head of its melancholy thoughts and passed her flute of bubbly over. He stood behind her and wrapped his free arm around her waist, tucking her against him tightly. Katniss relaxed into his embrace. He buried his nose in the soft, smooth skin of her neck drawing in the scent of the outdoors and the sea. His lips brushed against her temple and they watched as the sun cast a spectacular blaze of yellow and orange across the sky, slipping ever closer to what seemed like an endless expanse of water and turning the bright blue sea to a sparkling purple.

The captain cut the engine and the crew unfurled the sails, which snapped and rustled as they caught the wind. The force began to propel them forward once again, this time under the power of nature. Katniss’ eyes gleamed with a spark of exhilaration and adventure. Peeta added the look on her face to his seemingly endless mental catalogue of her expressions. Another one for the sketchbook.

“What’s your favourite colour?”

Her eyebrows quirked with surprise at his question. “It’s green. Why?”

He shrugged. “There’s so much stuff that I don’t know about you yet and I feel like we’re running out of time. I didn’t even know your favourite colour until just now.”

Katniss was still looking at him curiously, measuring his mood. “What’s yours?”

His champagne flute was still in his hand when he pointed to the horizon where only the rim of the descending sun remained. The sky was brushed with streaks of orange, red and pink as day gave way to night. “Right there.”

“The sea? I’ve never seen anything quite like the blue of the Caribbean Sea.” Her lips quirked. “I’ve only seen one other shade of blue that I like better.”

He smirked. “No. My favourite colour is orange.”

Katniss wrinkled her nose. “Orange?”

He smiled and kissed her neck just below her jaw. Her pulse leapt beneath his lips. “Yes, but soft. Muted.” He nodded toward the horizon. “Like the sunset.”

“Beautiful,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he whispered near her ear; his gaze on her.

The first stars were winking in the sky when soft music floated across the deck and couples began to dance. As the boat turned back toward shore, Peeta drew Katniss away from the rail and into his arms. He held her close and spun them in a slow circle barely larger than a dinner plate. Katniss toyed with the hair on the back of his neck before settling her head on his shoulder. She whispered “I love you” so softly that he could hardly hear it, but his heart leapt anyway. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to hearing those words from her.

“I’m not ready for this week to be over.”

Katniss made a sound of agreement. “Me neither. I’m going to be so lonely tomorrow night.”

Peeta sighed and laid his cheek on top of her head. “Me too.” They clung to each other and swayed to the music. Peeta felt the gloom begin to overtake him again. He forced it away and lifted Katniss’ chin so that he could look into her face. “We can’t let it wreck our night. I want to enjoy this time with you. We’ll deal with tomorrow when it happens.”

“Okay,” said Katniss with a tremulous smile on her lips. Peeta could see the turmoil in her eyes and knew it was mirrored in his own. Needing to erase the sadness that had befallen them, he extended his arm, forcing her to step back, before twirling her under his arm and pulling her tight against him again. This time, the smile she tossed him was genuine. He was reminded of a girl in a green prom dress who’d shyly clutched his hand until she’d forgotten to be nervous and laughed with his friends. They were older now, more self-assured, more ready for the power of the connection between them, but he was still awed by the idea that this enigmatic woman wanted him -- _loved_ \-- him.

The sailboat landed at the dock and Katniss, Peeta and the other passengers came ashore. While Peeta’s back was turned to watch the crew lowering the sails, Katniss planted her hands on his shoulders and jumped onto his back. He grunted with the impact and was still staggering in shock, trying to get his balance, when she planted a kiss behind his ear and captured his earlobe between her teeth.

“You were an all-state wrestler, Mellark,” The sensation of her breath against his neck sent a shiver down his spine. “You used to be prepared for a sneak attack. Think you’re still strong enough to carry me back?”

“Pfft,” he scoffed, hooking his hands under her thighs. “You weigh less than the bags of flour we get at the bakery.”

“Good. Then I don’t have to bother unstrapping these sandals again.”

They headed back up the beach toward the suite. Peeta travelled just above the line of the incoming tide to keep his shoes dry while Katniss giggled and nibbled on his neck. He turned his head and kissed her. “You know, I don’t typically carry bags of flour for a mile. And they’re usually more co-operative.”

“Hmm. That does it, I know you’re getting soft now.”

“Careful, Sweetheart, you might not get that surprise after all.”

Katniss slid off his back and darted in front of him. “Surprise?” Her eyes narrowed. “What are you up to?”

Peeta laughed and stepped around her, holding out his hand. “C’mon. You’ll like it, I promise.” Katniss grumbled under her breath about how much she hated surprises and sand in her shoes and then began to debate with herself about which she hated more, which only caused Peeta to grin and shake his head. She was adorable.

“So, you used to watch my wrestling matches?” he asked, in an attempt to distract her.

Katniss paused in her diatribe long enough to blush and bite the inside of her cheek. “Oh, you know, school spirit and all that.”

“Uh-huh. Ok.” They walked along in silence.

“And maybe I liked how you looked in your singlet. Maybe.”

Peeta didn’t need to see her face to know that it was scarlet now. “I might have watched an archery tournament or two,” he confessed. Katniss was the best archer in the state when they were in high school. He’d always wondered if she’d noticed him in the stands at her competitions. They hadn’t exactly been crowded.

He peeked over and her shrewd smirk told him she had. “And here I just thought you were an archery fan.”

“Oh, I was. A total fanboy.” He winked at her and swung their hands between them. “For one archer in particular.”

As they neared their suite, Katniss noticed something flickering on the sand. Her curiosity peeked, she began to drag Peeta toward a little oasis that the resort staff had built for them while they were sailing. Upon arrival, he could see that it was even better than he’d hoped. It was nestled between the lush shrubs and verdant trees that provided privacy to each of the suites. Two mats had been laid on the sand in an L shape and a mound of pillows was piled at their juncture. A squat, square table was set for dinner inside the L. The candles on the table wavered in the breeze and their flames glinted in the glassware and china. Lanterns cast golden beams along the sand. A little fire burned a short distance away. He watched Katniss as she slowly took it all in. “Surprise.”

Katniss leaned over and kissed him softly. “It’s perfect, thank you.”

Katniss kneeled on one of the mats and started to get comfortable while Peeta went inside the suite to tell room service that they’d returned. While he was gone, she leaned back into the pillows and began to count the stars. He re-emerged moments later with an ice bucket. “They’ll be here momentarily,” he told her, as he pulled a bottle of champagne out of the ice and wiped it off deftly. “In the meantime, they left us this.” The cork popped into the air when Peeta pried it out of the bottleneck. He waited for it to foam over and then he filled the two flutes on the table before settling down beside her. It was a good vintage, he noted, as the bubbles slid down his throat.

Katniss’ eyes glittered in the candlelight when he took her face in his hands. Her lids fluttered closed as he dropped kisses on her forehead, her nose and cheeks before bringing his mouth to hers. Her lips parted hungrily beneath his own. When his tongue swept inside, he could taste the champagne on hers. His fingers found her hair and pulled her closer. Katniss wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

Someone cleared their throat behind them. “Perdóneme, señory la señoraMellark. I have brought your dinner.” Katniss was blushing as she pulled away. “Do not be embarrassed, señoraMellark,” the waiter told her as he placed her plate before her and lifted the dome to reveal a lobster, cracked and ready for eating. “It is a beautiful thing to see two people beginning their lives together when they are so much in love.” Katniss gave the waiter a nervous smile and took a healthy gulp of her champagne. “Enjoy your meal, señor,” he said to Peeta, and told them he’d be back later.

Peeta grinned at Katniss, who was looking at the lobster like she was afraid of it. “Have you ever had lobster before?”

“I’ve had a lobster roll before, but I’ve never had a whole one on a plate like this. I couldn’t justify the price.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I don’t know where to start.”

Peeta tossed the pillows between them out of the way and scooted over to Katniss’s side of the table. “It’s easy, really, especially since they’ve done all the hard work. He used his fork to pick up some of the tail meat. “You just dip it in the melted butter,” he demonstrated, “and then you eat it.” He slipped his fork between her lips and watched her reaction as the flavour of the creamy meat burst on her tongue.

“It’s good,” she told him, licking the butter from her lips. “Really rich, though.” Peeta put some more on his fork and offered her another bite; watching as the tip of her tongue slipped over her lips again. She grinned at him over her champagne flute and he wondered if she’d caught him staring. “Aren’t you going to eat yours?”

He pulled his plate closer to his new spot beside her. Snuggled up together, they enjoyed their feast in the warm glow of their personal haven. Peeta watched her profile as she sipped her champagne. Her face was happy and relaxed in the candlelight. He’d been right to save this final dinner for the last night of their vacation. It was perfect. She was perfect.

They had barely finished their meal when their waiter was back, accompanied by another white jacketed co-worker. They declined dessert and before long, the second man had whisked away their table, while their other server rearranged the mats and pillows so that they formed a little bed under the stars. With a wink and a wish for a good evening, he disappeared out of sight.

They lay back against the pillows. Katniss curled up in her favourite spot in the crook of his arm and pointed out the constellations in the sky. Peeta kissed the top of her head as she lay in his arms in the starlight. Her voice rose and fell over the rhythm of the waves rolling against the beach and the staccato snaps from the little fire. Maybe this was the memory that would get him through the empty nights without her. As Katniss’s finger traced out bears and lions, Peeta tried to envision the schedule back in Panem and figure out how long before he could get to Pittsburgh to see her. His heart fell when he realized it could be a month before he could get a weekend free. He and Ryan would need to make some serious changes if he wanted more free time, and more still if he wanted to open a restaurant in Pittsburgh. Maybe he could coax Brandon into opening the bakery in the mornings. That was the part of the day that Bran liked best anyway. Then Ry would be free to run the restaurant at night, if he could get Ry to agree to that. He sighed. That was a lot of ifs.

He hoped Katniss would wait while he worked them out.

* * *

 

Peeta’s sigh brought Katniss out of the stars and back down to Earth. She raised herself up on her elbow and peered down at him. She wasn’t sure where his mind had wandered, but it wasn’t on the beach with her. “Am I boring you?”

“Huh?”

He was completely zoned out, she realized. “Am. I. Boring You?”

“What? Katniss, no,” he stammered into her scowling face. “No. Sorry. I was just… thinking.”

“What about?”

He stroked her cheek until the frown was erased from her face. “Restaurant stuff.” He kissed her. “Don’t worry about it.”

Katniss settled back down into his arms again and then slid her hand under his shirt to rest it on his chest. “Mmm. What a great night.”

Peeta absently drew circles on her back, mentally running the cost of another chef against the restaurant’s budget. “Yeah.”

Katniss slid her knee over his hips and straddled him. “Hey. Where are you? Stay with me.”

His eyes snapped to hers and he reached up to stroke the end of her braid. “I’m right here. Always.”

She leaned over until her lips were flush with his ear. “Guess I need to work harder at keeping your attention.” Her nimble fingers worked the buttons on his shirt and she followed the trail with her mouth, breathing in his spicy scent. Her tongue circled his navel while her fingers travelled lower to the button of his pants. She felt the bulge under his zipper twitch when her hand brushed across it.

“Can I ask you something?”

Katniss nodded and waited for the question she was sure to come. Sexy time in their little refuge sounded good to her. Her lips pressed a row of kisses along his waistband, formulating a plan to show him just how okay she was with the idea.

“Tonight, when the waiter called you Mrs. Mellark. Why didn’t you correct him?”

Katniss froze with shock for a second before she sat back up. Her arms crossed as she shrugged defensively. “It was no big deal.”

“It was to you. I could tell.” Damn. She thought she’d played that out pretty well. “But you didn’t say anything. Why?”

“You know, like at the cenote. It was just… easier to play along.”

Peeta rolled his eyes. “Remind me never to take you to Vegas. You’d lose your shirt at the poker table.”

She huffed. “Fine. I kind of… liked it,” she muttered, blushing furiously. She felt like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar and she hated it. “I just wanted to see what it felt like, you know? What it would be like if this really was our honeymoon.”

Peeta sat up and looked at her seriously. “Katniss. This is definitely not our honeymoon.”

Oh. _Oh._ She recoiled like she’d been slapped and jumped from his lap. Clearly, they were not in the same place at all.

“I, uh, I need to go inside,” she mumbled and then ran into the suite. The door slammed behind her and she bolted up the stairs to the bathroom off their bedroom. She locked the door and threw herself down onto wall of the tub, her hands in her hair. What had she gotten wrong? Communication was not her strength, but she’d truly felt like they were building something permanent between them. They were having a great evening until the waiter had called her señora Mellark. He’d grown quiet after that.

“Katniss!” he called from downstairs. “Where did you go?” She could hear the alarm in his voice as he raced up the steps. “Katniss!” His heavy steps came closer as he crossed the bedroom. He banged on the door. “Katniss! Are you in there? Please come out.”

“Leave me alone, Peeta!” She swiped at the tears that were threatening to spill over.

The doorknob rattled. “Katniss, open the door.”

She crossed the room and leaned against the door. “Go away, Peeta. Just let me be for a few minutes.”

He slammed his hand against the door, causing her to jump back. “Dammit, Katniss, we are not doing this again. You are not running away from me. Whatever’s happening, we need to talk about it. Now open the door or I’ll break it down.”

Katniss leaned against the sink and covered her face with her hands. She just needed a minute.

“I’m gonna count to three and then I’m coming in there. One!”

She just had to wrap her mind around this. She’d been thinking about forever and he wasn’t there.

“Two!”

He wasn’t there _yet_.

“Three!”

Katniss scrubbed at her face and stood up.

“Katniss, I’m coming in!”

She opened the door to find Peeta standing with his shoulder braced, ready to throw himself against the door. He yanked her into his arms. “Katniss, oh my God. I thought this was over. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I did, but I’ll fix it. Just don’t run from me again.”

“Peeta.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll fix it. I swear. I can’t lose you again. Not after knowing what it means to be with you.”

“Peeta,” she said, stroking his face. “No. It’s OK. It was me. It was my fault. I thought... I guess I thought we were in the same place. But we’re not. Maybe you need more time. Of course you do. You just broke up with Delly…”

Peeta took a step back and held her by the shoulders. He looked completely perplexed. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

She sniffled and swiped at the rivulets of tears that had finally spilled over. “Well, after the waiter left, you just got really quiet. And you weren’t paying attention. And then you asked why I didn’t tell him we weren’t married and you said this wasn’t our honeymoon. I just got really upset. I mean, it’s OK. I get it now. I had some time to think. You’re not in the same place as me…” Her voice broke.

“Aw, Katniss.” Peeta held her close and stroked her hair as she sobbed. When her shoulders finally stopped shaking, he led her to the bed and lay her down gently before stretching out beside her and wrapping her tightly in his embrace.

“How could we not be in the same place in this? I’ve loved you my whole life, Katniss. My whole life. Since I was five years old and I first heard you sing. Even when I gave up hope that we could ever be together, I still loved you.”

Katniss played with a button on his still-open shirt. “Then what’s the big deal if I pretended this was our honeymoon for a few minutes?”

Peeta stroked her hair again. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m sorry it hurt you.”

“I don’t know how else I could have taken that.”

Peeta was still for a minute. Then he sighed and flipped to his side so that they were nose to nose and smiled bashfully. “I wasn’t exaggerating about how long I’ve loved you, Katniss. I imagined our honeymoon for years.” When her eyes widened in surprise, he shook his head quickly. “Not in a creepy way, I swear. And now that I’ve got you, I _am_ going to ask you to marry me someday.” He forgot his discomfort when she melted in front of him. He linked their hands and stroked her ring finger with his thumb. “I’ve always thought we should get married in autumn. Then I could whisk you away to a log cabin on the shore of a lake in the mountains. I’m not sure where. New Hampshire or New York State maybe? Some place where the fall colours are beautiful. We’ll walk through the forest on a warm day through the trees all dressed in red and gold and orange and their leaves falling all around us. We’ll pick up the prettiest ones and press them in a book. I’ll cook for you in the cabin’s kitchen and in the evenings, we’ll cuddle up in front of a big stone fireplace or out on the porch, wrapped in a blanket. We’ll drink hot chocolate while we listen to the crickets chirp and the loons call. Then we’ll go to sleep in a big, soft bed tucked under the eaves in the loft.”

Katniss’ lips turned upwards. He’d just described her idea of heaven. “That sounds exactly right. Except for one thing.”

Peeta’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “What?”

“I plan on doing more than sleeping in that big, soft bed.”

She watched his shoulders rise and fall in a silent chuckle. “We’ll figure something out.”

She grabbed his shirt front and pulled him closer. He captured her bottom lip between his own as her hands slid up, mapping the plains of his chest before pushing his shirt past his biceps to his elbows. She bit down lightly on his shoulder and then her lips meandered along the wide expanse toward his throat. She sucked lightly near his collar bone and heard a slight moan escape from his lips.

“Katniss, we still have a lot to talk about.”

“Later.”

Peeta shrugged off his shirt and his hands roamed under her sweater, spanning her waist and skimming up her rib cage, before pulling it over her head. Katniss felt the current of anticipation under her skin and the responding throb between her legs. Her body recognized his touch and craved it, craved him. He dived into the valley of her breasts, still bound in the bikini top, kissing down one sensuous slope and up the other. He squeezed the soft mounds gently, flicking his thumbs over her already turgid nipples. She sucked in a breath in response. He reached behind her and released the clasp. The bikini top fell down her shoulders and Peeta tossed it to the floor with her sweater. He sat back, committing the moment to memory knowing that the flush of colour over her breasts and the fierce look in her eyes would haunt him until he’d transferred it to canvas. She was so strong, so beautiful, both inside and out. And she was finally, finally his.

He flicked open the button on her cropped pants and slid them off. Lifting her leg into the air, he kissed the inside of her ankle, up her calf to her inner thigh. Katniss held out her arms and Peeta fell into them. She thrilled at the heat of his belly against her own. His hardness pressed against her middle and instinctively, she raised her hips to meet him. The resulting heat coursed through her veins. His name sounded like a prayer when it slipped through her lips and the hunger for him that she’d been keeping on a slow burn all evening flared to life.

Peeta’s blonde locks shone in the moonlight streaming through the patio door and she fisted her hands in his curls. Their lips melded together while she ground herself against him again and reached for the button of his slacks. Peeta shook his head, before climbing off the bed and removing them and his boxer briefs. He rummaged in the bedside drawer. Then he held out his hand to her. She took it and joined him beside the bed.

“Come with me,” he whispered. “I want to make love to you in the moonlight.” She nodded in agreement and followed him as he led her out to the balcony, glancing around to be sure they were alone. He led her over by the little bistro set where they’d eaten breakfast and tossed a packet onto its surface. With her face cupped in his hands, Peeta leaned in to kiss her. Their lips met and clung together as he slowly backed her into the parapet wall. Peeta pulled back slightly to look deeply into her eyes. He traced her lips with his thumb and then sank his hands into her hair at the nape of her neck. When he brought his mouth back to hers, Katniss welcomed him with an open mouthed embrace, their tongues dancing together. Her hands tightened around his waist to hold him tightly against her, her need for him pushing away any worry they might be seen.

Peeta’s mouth began to trail along her neck. Katniss moaned in an equal mix of pleasure and frustration. Peeta gave her a wolfish grin. He brought his finger to his lips, signalling her to be quiet, and began to ravish her breasts, raising each mound to his mouth until her nipples were aching. He kneeled on the floor of the balcony as he kissed her belly and then hooked her bikini bottoms with his fingers. “May I?” he whispered. Katniss whimpered softly and nodded. She wanted, needed, his mouth on her. The bikini bottoms slipped slowly off her hips. He cupped her rear gently and then slid his hands up one slender leg to ease it out of the garment before stroking down the other leg to remove the bottoms. Katniss kicked them aside. Peeta reached out and grabbed a chair from the bistro set and raised her foot upon the seat so that she was spread out before him.

His thumb began to gently massage her clit, already swollen and slick with need. “Fuck,” he cursed. “You’re so wet, Katniss.”

Katniss bit her lip, unsure whether to be embarrassed by the state of her arousal or thrilled by his dirty talk. Then it didn’t matter anymore because he brought his mouth to her core, flicking his tongue once over the hooded nub, causing her to cry out. When he drew the bundle of nerves into his mouth and began to suck, Katniss gasped again and made a keening sound as she held him to her.

Peeta stopped and peered up at her. “Our neighbours will hear us,” he warned.

“Don’t care,” she said desperately. “Just don’t stop.” Peeta smirked and then returned to his ministrations. He drove two fingers inside her, stroking the pleasure zone just above her public bone. Katniss clenched her muscles as she began to ride his fingers, making frantic noises in her throat. Peeta responded with a groan of pleasure and the vibration took her higher. She called out his name again as another frisson of pleasure coursed through her. It was only this good with him. She had never trusted anyone the way that she trusted him. Her muscles clenched as she readied herself to fly.

“Peeta, I want you to come with me.”

He replaced his mouth with his thumb and looked up at her through his long lashes. “Not this time. Soon.” When he mouth returned to her clit, he sped up his thrusts and Katniss came, her head thrown back to the starry tropical sky, calling his name.

She was barely back on Earth when Peeta grasped her by the hips and spun her around. Quickly, he sheathed himself and filled her. Katniss, still feeling the aftershocks of her orgasm, responded with a delighted moan as she grasped the low wall. She looked over her shoulder at Peeta, whose eye were closed, his face and jaw slack with pleasure. When he finally opened his eyes on hers, his pupils were fat and his gaze intense. A thin sheen of sweat lay over his neck and shoulders. “God, you feel so good,” he said. “You ready?”

Katniss nodded and angled her hips to take him deeper. “Now. Hurry.”

Peeta’s fingers flexed at her hips as he drove himself into her again and again. Katniss lost herself in the speed and power of his thrusts. A breeze blew up off the water, stimulating her sensitive nipples. She rolled them between her fingers and thumbs and the pleasure shot right to her thighs. She could feel herself tighten even further around Peeta’s cock.

“Fuck, Katniss. You’re so tight.” She looked over her shoulder. Peeta was straining for control.

“Touch me,” she begged. When the heat of his fingers met her aching clit, Katniss called out her release and with two strong thrusts, Peeta’s followed.

When their breathing finally slowed, Peeta eased her back into his arms and tenderly kissed the nape of her neck. “That was, uh, wow.”

Katniss laughed and looked out over the beach where their little campfire had been reduced to embers. “It’s a good thing we’re going home tomorrow. I won’t be able to face the neighbours.”

Peeta’s forehead fell against her shoulder. “This wasn’t quite the romantic night I had in mind,” he muttered.

Katniss turned in his arms and smirked at him. “The night’s not over yet. We have lots of time for romance.”

Peeta lifted her into his arms and kissed her gently as he turned back to the bedroom. “I love the way you think.”

 


	11. Surprise, Surprise

Katniss stood with her bags on the bottom landing and looked up the stairs toward the fourth floor apartment she shared with Jo. Sometimes she wanted to curse her own stupidity. Renting the unit in the building without an elevator had been her idea. A way to save a few bucks and no big deal since she and Jo rarely bought more than a few groceries at a time. She looked down at the huge suitcase beside her and sighed. Peeta would be all the way back to Panem before she hauled it up the stairs.

She was already missing him, she realized as she trudged up the steps. They’d parted at the airport with a promise from him to text her once he got home safely and a plan to talk over FaceTime tonight.

But first, a hot shower, her sweats and a cup of hot chocolate. Because Pittsburgh in March felt like an Arctic winter after a week in the sand.

She dug through the pockets of her ancient leather jacket until she found the key to the apartment. She turned it in the lock and then backed inside, wheeling the suitcase over the threshold. Katniss was just kicking her boots into the closet when the smell of fresh coffee reached her nostrils. Excellent. Jo was home. She headed for the kitchen, already revising her plans for the day. Girl talk with hot chocolate first, then the rest. “Hey, I’m home,” she called as she entered the room.

“Hey Catnip.”

Gale Hawthorne was leaning against her kitchen cupboards. In his undershirt and boxers. Sipping coffee from her favourite mug.

She gaped at him. He smirked and then raised the mug in a mock toast, before slurping more coffee from the mug. She found her voice. “Gale, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Is the coffee ready yet, Gorgeous?” Jo’s voice rang out from the hall on the opposite side of the kitchen where their bedrooms were situated. Wearing only a man’s flannel shirt, she padded barefoot into the room. She stopped short when she saw Katniss. “Brainless.”

“Jo.”

Her roommate flushed and became very interested in her cuticles. “I thought you wouldn’t be home until later.”

“I guess you thought wrong. Do you two want to explain this?” Gale and Joanna exchanged looks. Gale’s gaze flicked to Katniss and then he pushed away from the counter.

“I’ll just go into the living room while the two of you get caught up,” Gale said, pausing to drop a hand on Katniss’s shoulder as he passed by. He cleared his throat. “It’s good to see you, Catnip.” He patted her shoulder once and walked out.

Katniss looked at Jo expectantly. Her roommate bit her lip. “I can explain.”

Katniss exploded. “Explain what? That Gale is the guy you bailed on me for? That seems kind of obvious at this point. Or do you plan to explain why you’ve been lying to me for three weeks?”

“Can we sit down, please?”

Katniss threw herself into one of the kitchen chairs and crossed her arms. “Start talking.”

Jo exhaled slowly and then sat down across from Katniss, folding her hands front of her. Her knee bounced up and down. “Gale came into the bar one afternoon about a month ago. To talk to me.” Katniss scowled in confusion. “About Prim and Rory,” Jo explained.

Katniss leaned across the table toward Jo. “Say what?”

Jo frowned. “Katniss, Rory wants Prim to marry him and move home to Panem, but she doesn’t want to leave you. She’s afraid you’ll be all alone and that you’ll refuse to visit her there.”

“Jo, Prim has said nothing about this to me,” said Katniss flatly. She tried to ignore the nagging voice in her head that recognized the truth she’d been turning a blind eye to. Prim had never really let go of Panem.

Jo rolled her eyes. “Because Prim thinks you’ll flip out. Anyway, Rory’s been confiding in Gale about it. So, Gale got in his truck and drove down here to see me. He thought we could talk, you know, old best friend to new best friend, and figure out a way to bring you around to the idea.”

Katniss closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “And what did you tell him?”

“I told him that if little sister and little brother thought they were grown up enough to get married, they should get their shit together, talk to you and leave us out of it. You should have seen his face! He gave me this look like I’d just hit him over the head with a two by four. Then he said I was right, which I was of course. So I poured him a drink and we talked until I finished my shift. After work, we went out to eat and laughed our asses off telling stories about you.”

“How nice,” Katniss snipped. “You bonded over me.”

“Well, at least you’re good for something, Brainless.” Jo’s gaze fell to the table where she started drawing circles. “We traded numbers. Texted and stuff. He came back the next weekend and we went out.” Jo shrugged. “And then one thing led to another and it was like I said before you left. Pow.” Jo mimicked and explosion near her ears. “Mind blown.”

Katniss tried not to make a face as the image of Jo and Gale in bed together flashed through her mind. “Look, Jo. I’ve known Gale my entire life. He’s loyal to a fault. He’s clever and brave. But he can be a real ass sometimes. He’s arrogant. It’s always about him.”

Jo laughed and looked at her pointedly. “Actually, he reminds me a lot of you.”

Katniss tapped her fingers on the table, needing to make Jo understand. “I’m serious, Jo. This idea that I hate Panem? That comes from him. He fills Rory’s head with this stuff. If you asked Gale, he’d tell you that he’s the reason I’ve never been back to Panem. I left Panem because Mom was falling apart and I don’t go there because my life is here. He’d tell you that Peeta came between us, but you know that I’ve never wanted Gale in that way.”

There was a knock at the door. Katniss rose to get it

“Hey Brainless?” Katniss paused to look at her friend. Jo had a vulnerable look on her face. “I really like him,”

Katniss’s face softened. “Until you came along, Gale was the best friend I ever had. He’s lucky to have you, Jo. And if he screws this up, I’m going to dust off my bow and plant an arrow in his ass.”

When another knock sounded at the door, Gale called out that he would answer it. Katniss heard the door swing open.

“Mellark?” Gale sounded incredulous.

“Gale?” Peeta’s voice drifted into the kitchen.

“Peeta?” gasped Katniss. She raced to the living room, Jo on her heels. She had to get to him before Gale ruined everything. Again.

In the next room, Peeta was standing uncertainly in the doorframe, his carry-on over his shoulder and a bouquet of flowers in his hand. Gale, still in his boxers, had yet to invite him in.

Katniss called his name again, suddenly so overjoyed by his presence that any worries about what Peeta might be thinking or the drama of the last hour was pushed to the background. She could touch him. See his smile. Hear his laugh. She pushed Gale out of the way in her rush to pull him inside the apartment, nearly lightheaded with giddiness over the idea of being in his embrace again.

Throwing her arms around his neck, she rose on her tiptoes to kiss him. Peeta’s free hand wrapped around her waist as he returned her enthusiastic greeting. Then her mind blanked of everything but the feeling of his lips against hers. His spicy scent, the strength of his arms. He was back again, even before she’d come to terms with not seeing him for a while.

He grinned down at her when they finally pulled apart. “Surprise.”

Jo gave a low whistle. “So this is Bread Boy. Well done, Brainless.” Then she grabbed Gale by the elbow and started to haul him into the kitchen toward her room. “C’mon, Gorgeous. Let’s give them some privacy.” Too shocked to protest, Gale followed her out.

“Nice to finally meet you, Jo,” called Peeta as they disappeared. He handed Katniss the flowers. “For you.”

“Peeta,” said Katniss nervously. “Whatever that may have looked like; well, it wasn’t that.”

Peeta gave her a half smile and tilted her chin up to look at him. “You mean Gale isn’t Johanna’s mystery man?”

Katniss lifted the paper off the flowers and found clutch of daisies inside. She peered back up at Peeta. “Well, yeah, but how did you guess?”

Peeta smiled again. “Katniss, you’re still wearing your coat, Johanna was half-naked and Gale was in his shorts. It didn’t take a rocket scientist.”

He followed Katniss into the kitchen where she pulled out the only vase in the apartment. She filled it with water and plopped the daisies into it. “They remind me of the meadow back home,” she told him. “Thank you.” She crossed back to Peeta and put her arms around him again. “I’m so happy you’re here. But aren’t you needed at home?”

Peeta kissed the top of her head. “Can we go to your room, maybe? I’d like to put my bag down, maybe get my coat off?” Katniss agreed and went back to the front door to get her own bags. She led the way through the kitchen, past Jo’s closed door to her own room at the end of the hall. As soon as the door was closed, they shed their coats and Katniss found herself in Peeta’s arms again. She buried her face in his chest.

“How long do we have?” She pulled Peeta’s Henley out of his jeans and slid her hands up his back, relishing the feeling of his skin under her hands again.

“Until sometime tomorrow. The bakery’s closed on Sundays, so there’s really only the restaurant to worry about and Ry said he’d could handle it by himself for one more day. I called from the Jeep to tell him I was back on American soil. He asked how the trip was and I told him about reconnecting with you.”

Her hands ceased roaming under his shirt. “And what did he say?” she asked to his chest.

Peeta grinned down at her. “He said, ‘It’s about goddamn time, Peet. Why the hell are you coming home today if she’s there and you don’t have to be here?’ So I said that I’d see him tomorrow.”

Peeta’s hands slid under Katniss’s hips and with a quick hop, her legs were wrapped around his waist and her fingers in his hair. She kissed him quickly.

“I think I’m going to like your brother.”

Peeta nuzzled her neck as he moved toward the bed. “You’re going to like this even more. He said that Bran was in a few mornings last week to help out. He thinks Bran really enjoyed himself and might want to buy back into the business. If he does, that means I can get started on opening the Pittsburgh Mellark’s really soon. And if he doesn’t, he might be willing to cover for me once in a while so that I can come down here. We’ll make this long-distance thing work, I promise.”

Katniss was laughing when he lowered her to the mattress. “Peeta, that’s fantastic. I can’t wait to meet them this weekend.”

Hovering above her with one foot still on the floor, Peeta froze. “This weekend?”

Katniss sat up on her elbows. “Sure. I know you’ve got a business to run. My weekends are mostly free. I thought I’d come up this weekend, if that’s ok with you.”

The astonished look on his face made her want to laugh again.

“Really? You’d do that? But you hate Panem.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why people think that. I left because I needed to go to school. My mother was too sick to take care of Prim and so I took her with me. I can’t have the career that I want and live there full-time, but I don’t hate Panem.”

Suddenly Peeta’s lips her on her own. “Best. Girlfriend. Ever.” Each word was punctuated with a smacking kiss.

She felt herself blush. Girlfriend, huh?

Peeta grinned and Katniss realized she’d said the words out loud. “Well, aren’t you?”

Katniss played with the button on his shirt, doing her best to ignore the squidgy feeling in her stomach. “Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, yeah. Of course I am. I suppose you just surprised me.”

Peeta shrugged. “Girlfriend doesn’t quite seem to cover the way I feel about you, to be honest.”

There was the squidgy feeling again. “Yeah?”

Peeta stretched out beside her and lifted her shirt to place a kiss on her belly just above her navel. “Yeah.” There was a pause. “Katniss?”

Katniss stroked Peeta’s hair as the kisses continued across her belly and he began to slide her shirt upwards. “Yeah?” Her voice sounded hoarse.

“Can I tell you something really petty and you won’t judge?” He rested his chin on chest and grinned up at her.

Katniss could feel her eyebrow quirk. “What?” she asked cautiously.

“So, um, you know how I thought Gale was your boyfriend all those years ago?”

‘Uh-huh.” The wary tone was still in her voice.

“Well, you pushing him out of the way to get to me was like a teenage fantasy come true.”

Katniss threw back her head and laughed. She reached for him and urged him upwards until his face was only inches from her own. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.” He popped the p. “It was very, very hot. You sure I wasn’t dreaming?”

“Nope,” she mimicked. “That was real, Mellark. Very, very real. Just like us.”

Peeta reached for her hands and linked her fingers with his own on each side of her head. “Always,” he whispered and then closed the gap between them.


	12. Epilogue

_**Five Years Later** _

Katniss walked along the sidewalk in Panem’s town square. Her pint-sized replica raced ahead toward a familiar blue awning, her black braids streaming down her back. Willow wasn’t supposed to run off and she’d have to reprimand her, but for now Katniss only grinned as her daughter darted between the tables on the sidewalk patio, greeting the restaurant patrons out enjoying the beautiful spring day. She bounced up and down while she waited for her mother to open the door.

“Hurry, Mommy!” she called out as Katniss came into view. “I want a cookie!” An older woman near the door chuckled. When she got closer, Katniss could see it was Madge Undersee’s mother, who was having lunch with a friend.

Mrs. Undersee looked at Katniss. “She’s adorable, dear.” 

“Thank you,” said Katniss, giving Willow a look that stopped the bouncing. “We like her. Even when she runs down the street without us.” Willow looked down and began to scuff the toe of her sneaker against the sidewalk. Satisfied that she’d subdued her daughter for the moment, Katniss turned back to the older woman. “How’s Madge?” 

“Just fine, dear. Still enjoying life in the Capitol. I’m hoping she’s going to settle down soon. I’d love to have a little darling like that one to spoil.”

“Mommy,” Willow whined.

Excusing herself from Mrs. Undersee, Katniss swung open the heavy door to the restaurant. A bell tinkled and Willow darted inside. Peeta came out of the kitchen, dressed in a smart pair of slacks and a French blue button down. 

“Daddy!” Willow shrieked and pelted across the room to her father. Peeta’s face glowed as it always did in his daughter’s presence. Her caught her and tossed her in the air before settling her on his hip. 

“Hello, Cupcake.” He flicked Willow’s nose. “Why don’t you go see what Uncle Ry’s baking in the kitchen?”

Willow wriggled to the ground and bolted through the kitchen door. Katniss heard her call out to Ry as it swung closed.

Peeta held out his arms to her and Katniss walked into them, enjoying a rare moment of peace. Peeta kissed the top of her head. “Did you get your mom settled?”

Katniss nodded. Rory and Prim had decided to move their mother out of the special care home where she’d been living for the last decade. They planned to use their father’s survivor’s benefits to hire Rory and Gale’s mother to stay with her while Prim and Rory were at work. When Katniss had left the house, her mother was rocking contentedly in her favourite chair, knitting a sweater set for the baby Rory and Prim were expecting in a few months.

Katniss gave Peeta a squeeze and then stepped back. “Almost ready?”

Peeta nodded. “Posy and Ry and I have put together the menu for the week, and I did up the order. Jo just has some cheques she needs me to sign and we can be on our way.” Peeta held open the door to the kitchen. “Come on back.”

Inside the kitchen, Willow was standing on a step stool next to her uncle, munching away on a chocolate chip cookie and jabbering about Auntie Prim’s new baby while he measured the ingredients for what Katniss suspected was a cake. Ry was acknowledging his niece with an “uh-huh” whenever Willow paused to take a bite or catch her breath, but his eyes were on Gale and Rory’s little sister, Posy. Well, on part of Posy’s anatomy, anyway. Posy had her back to Ry and was chopping vegetables for that night’s soup.

Katniss leaned over to Peeta. “Has Gale noticed that yet?” She jerked her head toward Ry. 

Peeta grinned as they continued toward the office. “Nope. But Jo can’t wait until he does. I just hope Posy notices first. He may have met his match with her.”

In the office, Jo was running cheques off on the printer. She pointed at them. “Those are the paycheques for the Pittsburgh restaurant.” She pointed at another pile on the desk. “Those are for the accounts for this month and I’ve updated the books so you can see how we’re doing. The balance sheet for the Panem location is there too. I’ll go over it with Ry and Bran later.” 

Peeta grabbed a pen and started signing cheques, wondering aloud how they’d ever manage without Jo to take care of the accounts. While his back was turned, Jo looked at Katniss. She mouthed the words, Have you told him yet? Katniss shook her head. Jo rolled her eyes.

Finished with the cheques, Peeta picked up the balance sheets and looked them over quickly.  “How are we doing on our project?” 

“The Philly location? You’ve got a ways to go there. Katniss has been making good progress on her project though. You should ask her about it.”  With a cackle, Jo left the room and went into the kitchen where Ry was preparing to turn on the mixer. 

Peeta gave her a puzzled look. “Katniss? What’s she talking about?” 

The little office filled with noise as the mixer roared to life and the knife continued to slash into the butcher block. Katniss bit her lip and looked at Peeta sheepishly, wondering how best to privately deliver the news. Katniss opened and closed her mouth, still reaching for the right words when she heard it. A shrill little voice straining to be heard above the racket.

“And you know what else, Uncle Ry? I’m gonna be a big sister.”

The mixer stopped. The chopping ceased. Jo chuckled in glee.

Peeta gaped. 

Katniss shrugged.

Ry’s voice floated into the office. “Say that again, Cupcake?” 

“Mommy’s having a baby. I heard her telling Auntie Prim this afternoon.”

Peeta watched her cautiously. “Is that true, Katniss?”

She placed her hand over her belly and nodded. “About nine weeks. I know the timing isn’t great with the expansion, but…”

“Are you kidding me? Another baby? This is fantastic news!” Peeta swooped in and lifted up into his arms, kissing her soundly on the mouth while he spun her round. Katniss laughed and demanded he put her down. 

Once both of her feet were safely on the ground again, Peeta laid a hand over her stomach. “We’re having another baby,” he beamed and kissed her. “We’ll just put the new restaurant on hold for a while, until the kids are bigger. Do you think we need to buy a house? The condo won’t be big enough. We definitely need a house. Somewhere between your office and the restaurant. I’ll ask Jo to run the numbers.” To shut him up, Katniss drew him into a kiss as deep and hungry as the one that got them into this situation in the first place. When they finally pulled apart, Peeta enfolded her in his arms with a happy sigh.

With her cheek pressed up against his chest, Katniss breathed in her husband’s spicy cologne and listened as work resumed in the kitchen. Jo’s voice could be heard over the din, regaling a chortling Ry with the tale of the day she’d found Katniss scarfing down half a dozen cheese buns in a closet at the Pittsburgh restaurant three weeks ago and guessed the truth. She could feel Peeta’s silent giggle.

For the umpteenth time in their 15-year friendship, Katniss contemplated the murder of Johanna Mason-Hawthorne and then decided to let her live.

“Katniss?” Peeta said, interrupting her thoughts. His lips were pressed to her brow. “The best thing that ever happened to me was taking a honeymoon all by myself.”  

Me too, she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the fantastic response to this story. This fic popped into my head about a year ago and wouldn't let go. I hoped you liked as much as I enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> Much love,  
> Burkygirl


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